Is British Film Dead?

This 2005 article by Johnathan Gems states all the reasons why the British Film industry has died.
He complains about how the UK Film Council boast the success of their 'British' films, when none of the films are actually properly British, being made by four foreign studios: Pathe, Warner Bros, Disney and Universal.

Gems talks of 'Hollywood Accountancy', which is essentially a way of Hollywood companies doing things legally that would be illegal in any other business, country or industry. This is due to the fact that Roosevelt changed laws for Hollywood back in 1939, promising them that they could have financial-control exemptions if they produced anti-German movies. It has still continued to this day, meaning that money is no issue for many studios.

The British Film Industry relied heavily on the Eady Levy. This levy worked like this: in exchange for access to the domestic market in the UK, foreign distributors paid the Government a small percentage of the income they received from selling their films to Britain. This money was then passed on to British distributors. Although it was a relatively small amount, the income from the levy was often the difference between a distributor failing or staying in business. However, it was abolished.

Gems believes that the British Film Industry does not exist, despite what 'government ministers and quangos like the UK Film Council' say. He states that the British Film Industry has not existed for more than 30 years.

The main issue with reviving a British Film Industry is that the Treasury, Depart of Trade & Industry and the Office of The Prime Minister all are against protecting British films because of the commitment to a 'free market'; that is, allowing foreign companies to remain prevalent.

Gems talks of how the 'Hollywood Six' control 84% of our domestic market, and how French company Pathe controls roughly 12%. British films account for less than 4% market share, and he says that no national film industry can be said to exist if it has less than 20% of its home market.

France protects its film industry well; it is the law that foreign companies cannot own more than 70% of the domestic market. The French have a higher hit ratio, whereby 1 in 10 films is a hit. In contrast, only 50 out of 2000 films in the US industry are classed as a hit.

Gems talks about how humiliating the Harry Potter movie franchise is; J.K.Rowling wanted to sell the rights to the film to a British film studio, but there simply isn't one, which is why they got sold to Warner Bros. He says how the UK Film Council brag about the success of these movies, despite the fact that they are not British in nature. He calls this a 'humiliating demonstration of the abject failure of our industry'.

He quashes the belief that projects like Harry Potter aren't made by British companies due to the fact that there is not enough money to do so; however, British banks are investing billions of pounds a day. There is not one British company that is set up to give a film a general UK release.

Gems says that if anyone still believes that the free market is a good place for British films, they are deranged. He states that the free market is only free for Hollywood. He believes that the reason there are no official laws protecting US films is because they don't need them - they are protected by unofficial laws.

When living in LA, Gems tried to set up a project with an American star who's price was $1.5m per picture. 2 years later, he was back in England and helping to produce a film with a European distributor. He called the agent of the American Star, and the agent wanted to know if he was paying Working Title Rate, which effectively means that the price is three times more than that if he was in the US.

The 'law' is that if a foreign distributor or foreign production company wants an American star, they must pay a tariff. This tariff is the star's price mulitplied by three - known as the Working Title Rate because Working Title were the first to pay it.