Some 200 movie shoots spent £1.6bn in Britain in 2016, a rise of 13% on the previous year, reveal new BFI statistics

The Brits may not be coming at this year’s Oscars, as Tuesday’s nominations saw the country score its lowest number in a decade, but the film industry is increasingly coming to Britain.

New statistics released by the British Film Institute on 26 January show that 200 feature films started shooting in the UK last year, contributing to a total spend of £1.6 billion. This is a 13% rise from the previous year’s figures – and the highest number since the record started in 1994. Of the 200 films, 48 were funded outside the UK, and these account for 85% of the total investment.

Adrian Wootton, chief executive of industry body the British Film Commission, said: “2016 was a banner year for the UK’s film and TV industries, which attracted record levels of inward investment, and some of the world’s most ambitious productions.

“Our industry offers the complete package in terms of talent, skills, facilities, VFX expertise and competitive tax reliefs, so it’s no wonder international film and TV clients continue to make the UK their destination of choice.”



Wootton also heads Film London, an agency which seeks to attract investors to the capital, which is currently the third busiest hub of movie production in the world, after Los Angeles and New York.

It is also where three-quarters of the country’s movie industry is based, thanks to post-production facilities such as special effects outfit Framestore – whose work on Gravity propelled it to global acclaim – and veteran studios Shepperton, Pinewood (where James Bond is filmed) and Leavesden, Warner Bros’ home of Harry Potter.

Last year that studio played host to Ben Affleck’s Batman and Henry Cavill’s Superman, among others, when superhero ensemble movie Justice League filmed there. Meanwhile Pinewood was taken over by Disney between February and July 2016 for production on the new Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi. Both movies are scheduled for release at the end of 2017, with Star Wars widely expected to be the year’s best performing film.

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The decision to film Star Wars: The Force Awakens – first in the new Disney franchise – at Pinewood in 2014 was credited with jump-starting renewed international eagerness to base films in Britain. That deal was the brainchild of then-chancellor George Osborne, who spearheaded a new tax-relief scheme attractive to Disney – and whose name appeared in the end credits.

The film took £1.6bn worldwide, while its spinoff, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, made £806m. That film was also shot at Pinewood.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Duke of Cambridge and Prince Harry give the royal seal of approval to Pinewood on a visit to its Star Wars sets last year. Photograph: Adrian Dennis/PA

Other big budget titles setting up camp in the UK last year included Tom Cruise adventure reboot The Mummy and Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi adventure, Ready Player One. Neither of these were studio based, however, instead shooting at a variety of locations across the country, with Spielberg mostly basing himself in Birmingham.



Yet more regional was Early Man, Nick Parks’s latest Aardman animation, which comes from the studio’s Bristol headquarters, and Danny Boyle’s long-awaited Trainspotting sequel, T2, which shot mostly in Edinburgh. Period dramas including Victoria and Abdul – in which Judi Dench reprises her award-winning turn as Queen Victoria – and Armando Iannucci’s biopic The Death of Stalin also ranged across the country.

Meanwhile Michael Bay’s fifth Transformers film, The Last Knight, attracted controversy after transforming the former home of Winston Churchill into a fictional headquarters for Hitler, complete with Nazi flags and stormtroopers in the forecourt.

Last year London mayor Sadiq Khan teamed with Film London to commission a feasibility study into the creation of a new studio in London – the first of its kind in 25 years.

A 17-acre plot in Dagenham East, around 10 miles from Soho, is under review as the site of what would be the country’s largest studio. Khan warned that the city’s standing within the global film community should not be taken for granted. “To sustain and grow this success story,” he said, “it is critical that the capital gets significantly more studio and production capacity to maximise the opportunities for film-making.

The BFI reports a different story with television production: 84 high-end programmes (classed as those whose budgets exceed £1m an hour) began shooting in Britain last year, but their total spend was just £726m, which represents an 18% year-on-year decline. However the proportionate level of foreign investment mirrored that for film, with non-UK-funded productions contributing £478m, 11% up from 2016 and the highest sum since analysis began.



Big-budget small screen productions which began shooting in the UK last year include the sixth series of Call the Midwife and the second series of The Crown.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Big-budget, small screen … Call the Midwife being filmed in Mill Hill, north London. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

That show, which was produced by streaming giant Netflix, has been seen as displaying a production ambition the BBC can no longer afford to bankroll. It triumphed in key categories at the Golden Globes last month, taking best drama series and best actress for its star, Claire Foy. But BBC1 series The Night Manager also took three acting awards, and has seen healthy overseas sales.

Just 12 UK citizens are nominated for next month’s Oscars, down from 29 last year, and the lowest total for more than a decade. Only three actors are up for Academy awards: Dev Patel for adoption weepie Lion; Andrew Garfield for war epic Hacksaw Ridge; and Naomie Harris, who plays a crack-addicted mother in acclaimed drama Moonlight. Only Harris is felt to be in with a chance of going home with gold on 26 February.