Leading figures within the British film industry have reacted with a mix of wariness and bemusement at the prospect of tariffs announced by Donald Trump on motion pictures produced in “foreign lands”.
Rebecca O’Brien, producer of a string of movies by Ken Loach together with Palme d’Or winners The Wind That Shakes the Barley and I, Daniel Blake says that tariffs seem “simply unworkable given how intertwined and global the film industry is”. “I can see that Trump watches Hollywood collapsing and losing its jobs to the rest of the world but that’s because it’s a very expensive place to make films.”
O’Brien added: “No doubt it’ll take a while for the dust to settle, deals to be made and something or nothing to come out of this. What’s for certain, though, is there will be a pause in the industry while everyone runs around working out what to do. The fragile film economy definitely doesn’t need that.”
Stephen Woolley, producer of Carol and On Chesil Beach, referred to as Trump’s plans “ludicrous” and stated: “I am sure no one has thought this through and in a world of international co-productions its nigh impossible to regulate. One thing is for certain: those enemies of the state like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Tom Cruise who are presenting a National Security threat by insisting on shooting their films in Europe have been warned!”
Woolley added: “The insidious message behind this is that Trump’s brains trust could make it really difficult for the already beleaguered independent film industry, in the US and globally, to continue making original and innovative films, especially with a propaganda watchdog on their backs. That is the dark message of his statement.”
Colin Vaines, producer of Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool and Coriolanus, stated that whereas it was “very unclear exactly what President Trump is intending”, it appeared “that his main aim appears to be to return more production to the US, but of course there are many other proposals which might help achieve that to some degree, including incentives like major film tax credits.”
Trump’s movie tariff announcement got here a day after a meeting with actor Jon Voight, considered one of Trump’s so-called “Hollywood ambassadors”, who had proposed “limited tariffs” as a part of a wide-ranging plan to spice up US film manufacturing. The Queen director Stephen Frears had some sympathy for Voight, saying: “Trump is as usual hopeless at everything. I feel sorry for poor Jon Voight who, I imagine, made perfectly sensible suggestions. Subsidies, support etc. Trump failed to understand and bolloxed it all up. What a halfwit! Still, nobody got killed.”
Mike Figgis, director of the Oscar-winning Leaving Las Vegas stated: “Like a lot of the Trump stuff it makes a good headline. I don’t think it will help Hollywood particularly as so much of the productions go to Atlanta now. The more interesting question would be, why are they continuing to make so many bad films at insanely inflated budgets which force them to go shopping overseas?”
Mark Cousins, director of A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things, stated: “Film history is full of countries tipping the lever in favour of their own film industries. What’s new in Trump’s sudden announcement is the unreason, bellicosity and instinctive xenophobia.”
The UK seems to be significantly weak to any try by the US president to stop US studios taking pictures abroad, with suggestions that tariffs could “wipe out the British film industry”. Figures present that non-British film and TV projects introduced in £4.8bn, or 86% of manufacturing cash spent within the UK, with the latest growth of studio development – already in trouble – additional threatened if productions dry up.
Actor Brian Cox described the prospect of tariffs as a “disaster”, including “[Trump is] not really understanding the point of view of how films are made, and what films cost, [how] the cost of films [has] gone up and the cost of films in America went up considerably … It’s a kind of nonsense and a divine ignorance on all their parts.”
With political figures comparable to California state governor Gavin Newsom pushing for a federal tax credit score scheme, Jezz Vernon, producer and senior lecturer in film at the University of Exeter, says this might present a viable various. “If Trump were to authorise and fund bigger regional tax credits in the US in tandem with state governors then we would see a big production shift back to the US. Just last week we saw Netflix move 3 Body Problem from the UK to Hungary to use their tax credit rebate which is higher than the UK.”
Vernon additionally identified that reciprocal tariffs would trigger main issues: “It would instantly damage the global economy of Hollywood studios and the streamers – they rely on the economy of scale from worldwide subscribers and audiences to fund and monetise their productions. Instead of aiding Hollywood, the tariffs would immediately damage the central economic model that sustains them.”
The British actors’ union Equity criticised the “fragility” of the film and TV industry, with Equity common secretary Paul W Fleming saying: “A lot of the panic over the past 24 hours is due to the fragility in the system. This can be addressed positively through properly funding our public service broadcasters and ensuring an attractive and fair tax and investment environment for studios and production.”
Fleming added: “America’s objective is to generate more productions and more jobs in film. Is that going to be achieved by stopping filming Barbie, which was filmed here on British union agreements, or Wicked or Mission: Impossible? Clearly not. The industry tends to feed itself, so an upturn in American production is a good thing for the UK.”
Since making his bombshell announcement, Trump has appeared to row back on his comments, saying he was “not looking to hurt the industry” and deliberate to satisfy with Hollywood leaders.
