03/12/2003

UK companies received the lion share of development funding from the MEDIA Programme in 2003, that is to say 18.6% or €2,790,000 of the total €15m annual MEDIA spend, beating France (€2,585,00) and Germany (€1,995,000).
40% of the total investments went to single projects (17.7% for fiction, 8.6% for documentaries, 8.9% for animation) and 60% to slate funding. 17 UK companies joined the pool of UK slate funding recipients: Blackwatch Productions, Brook Lapping Productions, Cheeky Productions, Cyclops Films, Fiction Factory, Fragile Films, Gruber Films, Optical Image, Q.I. Random Harvest Pictures, Scala Productions, Sixteen Films, Slate Films, Steve Walsh Productions, The Bureau Film Company, Two Sides TV, Film& Music Entertainment and Recorded Picture Company. Over the last couple of years, applications from the UK have been increasing steadily from 352 in 2001 to 574 in 2002 and 778 this year.

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“We are delighted with this result, especially since this year we see a lot of our clients amongst the successful applicants, companies that chose to ask for our advice and support and benefited from it”, said UK Media desk director Agnieszka Moody. The new call for Development Proposals will be published today (December 3rd) and will have two deadlines: March 15 and May 31st.