22/10/2013 - Maria Miller has met with representatives from Disney, Lucasfilm, Warner Bros and HBO

Inward investment accounted for 80% of total UK production spent in 2011, with filming contributing £3.7 billion to UK GDP and £1 billion to exchequer revenues. The vast majority of film and television inward investment comes from the US, and therefore UK Culture Secretary Maria Miller (photo) paid a one-week long visit to Los Angeles to ensure that the American lifeblood to the British industry continues flowing.

Miller met with representatives from Disney, Lucasfilm, Warner Bros and HBO and listened to industry suggestions on ways in which filming conditions could be made even more attractive to American productions, on top of the existing tax reliefs for film, animation and high-end television projects. Given the global success of HBO’s UK-shot Game Of Thrones, Miller was keen to understand from them how the UK television tax credit was working at ground level.

Lucasfilm recently announced their decision to shoot the new Star Wars film in the UK, which is likely a £1 billion investment and will create up to 1000 jobs. Miller wanted to ensure that all three films in the franchise would shoot in the UK.

Miller said, “It is fantastic that huge films are choosing the UK and we are working with the British Film Commission and industry to ensure we can facilitate all the productions which want to take advantage of our world-class crew, infrastructure and lucrative tax reliefs.”

Big budget American films currently shooting in the UK include Mortdecai, Fury, Ex-Machine, Dracula Year Zero, Cinderella, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Heart Of The Sea, Into The Woods and Exodus.