Sydney Morning Herald’s Karl Quinn interviewed Ausfilm CEO Kate Marks, who says the agency has “over $900 million worth of real enquiries at the moment” from 18 Hollywood-backed features and TV series looking to shoot here.

Ms Marks says the agency has only a narrow window in which to convert at least some of those enquiries into firm commitments but to do so it needs an urgent top-up to the Location Incentive fund established in 2018 and set to run until 2023, with all but $18 million of its $140 million already allocated.

“The location fund has been really successful, but once it runs out the projects run out,” she says.

The Morrison government is expected to make an announcement on assistance to the screen industry soon, though what is in it is being closely guarded.

Before COVID-19 shut production down, Australia was poised for a big couple of years in terms of foreign activity, with back-to-back Marvel films at Fox Studios in Sydney, and the TV series Clickbait and Shantaram and two fantasy films from Dick Cook Studios at Melbourne’s Docklands among the projects announced.

Ms Marks estimates the shutdown impacted around $725 million of foreign production scheduled for 2020 and 2021.

Read the full article on SMH by Karl Quinn here.