Amazon Donates $6 Million in Relief to European TV & Film Community

Amazon Prime Video and Amazon Studios have made a $6 million commitment to support the European TV and film production creative community through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Donations will be made to COVID-19 relief funds in countries across Europe to support the creative community as TV and film production begins to restart across the continent.

The first confirmed donations from the $6 million fund include a £1 million donation in the U.K. to the Film and TV Charity’s COVID-19 Response to kick-start a new grants scheme to help the industry recover; and a £500,000 donation to the Theatre Community Fund, launched by Olivia Colman, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Francesca Moody to provide hardship grants to theatre workers and freelancers across the U.K.

“The creative community in Europe has been vital to our success in producing high-quality Amazon Original TV series and movies for our global audience, and it is essential for us to help that community through this pandemic,” said Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios. “We’ve made our first donations of £1.5 million today to provide support to the talented freelancers from the U.K.’s creative community who have been directly affected by the closure of theatres and halt in TV & film production. As we gear up production on a number of Amazon Original series across the U.K. and Europe in the coming months, we’re committed to continuing to support Europe’s talented creative community through this crisis.”

Alex Pumfrey, CEO of the Film and TV Charity, said: “We’re incredibly grateful to Amazon for demonstrating such huge support for people working in television and film at this most difficult time for the industry. This fantastic donation to the Film and TV Charity will kick-start a new fund to support the diverse talent in our industry through the recovery process. We know that the pandemic has a disproportionate impact on people who are already underrepresented in our industry and that we must take action to prevent even greater inequality. There is a time-limited opportunity to protect the diversity of our industry for the future and I hope that others will seize this moment to contribute to our COVID-19 response.”

The Theatre Community Fund (Colman, Waller-Bridge and Moody) said: “We’re utterly blown away to have such an extraordinary level of support from Amazon. Our theatre community has never been more threatened or fragile and this donation, alongside those from other industry individuals, is a game-changer for its future. On behalf of the Theatre Community Fund we extend a huge thank you to Amazon for the acknowledgment of the value and power of U.K. theater and how we as an industry will survive anything when we hold each other up in times of crisis.”