Lenny Abrahamson’s Room and John Crowley’s Brooklyn may not share much in common beyond their Best Picture nominations for the 88th Academy Awards.
Despite their American settings, a closer look at the film’s credits reveals both 2015 Oscar nominees were curiously Canadian-Irish co-productions.
“We’ve had a couple of successes of late,” said Liz Shorten, managing vice-president of the Canadian Media Producers Association’s B.C. branch.
She noted that while those acclaimed films didn’t originate from B.C. producers, they showcase the potential for local producers to partner with those in the Republic of Ireland.
Shorten accompanied 10 B.C.-based producers to Dublin in late November for what was dubbed a co-production forum, where Canadian and Irish producers met to discuss projects they’d be interested in co-producing.
Among the notable local producers attending the two-and-a-half day conference were OmniFilm Entertainment, Force Four Entertainment and Brightlight Pictures.
Earlier in the month, OmniFilm announced a development deal with Dublin’s Subotica Entertainment that was fostered through a new pilot program between Creative BC and the Irish Film Board.
Creative BC and the Irish Film Board are putting up matching dollars and Euros, capped at $30,000 each, to fund the development of the TV series, The Gulliver Curse.
The project has not been given the greenlight for production. Instead, the money is going toward the costs of polishing the script – or what Shorten describes as the film industry equivalent of R&D.
“It’s the risky part of our business because more projects get developed than go into production,” she said.
Robert Wong, Creative BC vice-president and acting B.C. film commissioner, told Business in Vancouver one measure of the pilot program’s success would be whether The Gulliver Curse goes into production or at least triggers more financing based on the script.
“The incentive for the private company of course is that they are able to access development dollars, which are kind of hard to come by,” he said.
In Canada, it’s generally broadcasters or distributors that invest their own money into developing a script before a series can be produced.
But the Creative BC-Irish Film Board funding allows OmniFilm and Subotica to develop the series before taking it to broadcasters to sell.
“These [financing] programs don’t really take a lot of money,” Wong said.
“It’s kind of like seed money for these projects and a little bit of money at the right time could really propel a project forward in great leaps.”
If the pilot is successful, Wong said Creative BC would consider launching something similar with other agencies across the globe.
Meanwhile, a greenlight for The Gulliver Curse would have the show filmed in Ireland and post-production and visual effects handled in Vancouver.
The back-and-forth between continents goes further than that, though: London-born, Vancouver-based writer Simon Barry is the one handling script duties.
Shorten said the financial incentives for co-productions are enticing in cases like Ireland due to treaties that allow Canadian producers to tap into government incentives available to local producers. The Canadian producers just need to make sure they have a local producing partner.
Sixty countries have TV- and film-related treaties and memorandums of understanding with Canada, according to Telefilm Canada, the Crown agency administering the treaties on behalf of Ottawa.
“We have more treaties than anyone else in the world,” Shorten said. “We have such a small market, of course, here in Canada that we need to get out and sell our projects internationally.”
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