15/10/2003

Every £1m invested by the UK Film Council (FC) has generated average returns of more than £9m according to figures just published by the UK government support film body. The 20 UK films released so far in which the FC has invested over £13m in total over the last three years have attracted over 31,4 million people around the world and grossed £125,79m receipts. Three of the 20 titles have each scored more than £10m at the box office: Sognando Beckham [+see also:
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film profile] and Gosford Park (£49m word-wide) that have already repaid their investments and The Importance of Being Earnest. Those films as well as The Magdalene Sisters [+see also:
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film profile] and the French co-production L’homme du train [+see also:
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film profile] recorded over one million admissions each.
Of all 20 films supported, only four sold less than 100,000 tickets and paid back less than 10% of their National Lottery investment.
John Woodward, UK FC Chief Executive welcomed the “increasing number of Lottery-funded critical and box office successes”, but said that “there is still a long way to go”. “The release of many UK films has been restricted owing to market conditions, limiting the number of people who actually have the opportunity to see what are often imaginative and entertaining films. That is why the UK FC has also introduced a range of measures to widen the distribution of films and increase the number of people able to see them”.

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