Australian Production Spend Up 43% But Local Shoots See Reduced Share

Screen Australia has reported that spending on Australian drama production increased 43% to reach a record $1.79bn (A$2.7bn) across 174 titles in the 2024-2025 financial year.

International productions accounted for $1.08bn (A$1.62bn) of that total, an increase of 72% on the previous year. Within that spend, international features accounted for $778m (A$1.16bn) with titles including Sony’s Anaconda and Legendary Entertainment’s Godzilla x Kong: Supernova shooting in Australia over the past year.

International TV/VOD accounted for spend of $306m (A$458m) with series such as Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters Season 2 and Universal’s All Her Fault, starring Sarah Snook. Strong results for inbound production come off the back of Australia’s enhanced Location Offset programme, which was increased from 16.5% to 30% in 2023, followed by tweaks to minimum expenditure requirements.

Australian productions saw expenditure increase by 14% to $735m (A$1.1bn) across 71 titles. However, the overall share of local productions decreased to 40% compared to 50% in the 2023/2024 financial year.

Screen Australia noted that while there was an increase in expenditure on Australian theatrical features and SVOD content, there were significant declines in spend on Australian free-to-air (FTA) and children’s programming. The number of Australian titles entering production declined from 89 to 71, suggesting that the expenditure increase was driven by a smaller number of bigger budget titles.

Spend on theatrical features increased by 76% to $253m (A$379m), compared to $144m (A$215m) in the previous year, which Screen Australia said was driven by “a limited number of high-budget films over A$50m”. Films listed by Screen Australia under Australian features include Netflix sci-fi action title War Machine, starring Alan Ritchson and Dennis Quaid, and Warwick Thornton’s First Nations Western Wolfram.

The report also found while spend on Australian SVOD increased by 4.5%m to $329m (A$492m), compared to $315m (A$471m) the previous year, spend on FTA fell by 14% to $108m (A$162m) and children’s programming was down 41% to $23m (A$34m).

Australian SVOD productions included Netflix’s Heartbreak High Season 3, Amazon Prime Video’s Deadloch Season 2, Disney+’s The Artful Dodger Season 2 and several productions from local streamer Stan, including Dear Life, Gnomes and He Had It Coming.

While congratulating the industry for the strong results, Screen Australia CEO Deirdre Brennan said: “The numbers reflect a complex story of production value and content volume. While there is moderate growth in local drama expenditure, fewer TV titles entered production across free-to-air, VOD and children’s content, showing ongoing shifts in commissioning behaviour.

“This presents an industry challenge, but also an opportunity to seek out new areas of collaboration and innovative production to ensure we continue to elevate Australian storytelling.”

Kate Marks, CEO of location attraction agency Ausfilm, said: “We celebrate this record level of international production activity, driven by the reformed Location Offset. This activity helps sustain the ecosystem that supports Australian stories by keeping our crews working, funding training, enabling investments into screen businesses and building capabilities.

“At a time of global industry disruption, the ongoing mix of local and international work makes our screen industry resilient, sustainable and globally competitive.”