IESB.net chatted up Australian Film Commissioner Tracey Vieira about the recent controversy surrounding the country's tax credits and whether or not the 'Justice League' production is entitled to receive them. Word is that the production was likely to only receive a reduced credit under what they'd expected and therefore was considering moving the production to Vancouver.
Vieira told IESB that no decision has been made yet about whether the film would be deemed a true Australian production, and therefore eligible for the full 40% tax incentive, or whether or not it would be seen as an American production with Australian elements, and only receive an incentive as low as 15%.
"There's a lot of Australian elements to it but what the government needs to figure out is the significant Australian content and where on the scales is it really falling? Is it somewhere in the middle ground because, if so, it's probably not considered significant," Vieira said. "What they don't want to do is take rebranded American films with a change of names and a few attachments and give away such a huge amount of money that would just disappear for us."
So what's caused the delay in decision making?
"I'm certainly not on the panel that makes the final decision about the funding. But certainly talking to some of the Australians involved, they consider it to be a significant Australian film. It's a challenging nutcracker of an incident in that it's come so quickly after it was introduced," Vieira continued. "It's not an incentive that says, 'You check this box, you get five points.' It's much more flexible than that so I think they're taking their time with it."
Vieria also points out that it's not only the tax issue that's holding up the show.
"And there was Warner Bros. who really didn't feel that the script was quite right and didn't want to right it. Now it's a whole different game in terms of stage-availability."
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