\n\tPREMIUM: Continuing our series on production incentives across Europe, Jay Stuart looks at how the Czech Republic is attracting international producers.<\/p>\n
\n\t“You need to be able to offer tax breaks or cash rebates or some form of incentive because incentives are now being offered in so many places that if you don’t have them, you can’t compete,” says Ludmila Claussova, the film commissioner at the Czech Film Commission. “In 2003–04, we realized that we needed to bring in incentives. It took five years of hard work to convince the government to do so. We have great infrastructure, great crews and sets and costumes, and great locations close to Prague, but without incentives, it didn’t matter. It’s psychological. We would say, Let’s budget it, we might still be cheaper even without incentives, but [producers] didn’t even want to look.”<\/p>\n
\n\tClaussova continues, “We were losing productions to Budapest, London and Berlin, as well as the U.S. and Canada in the sense that we were not attracting North American projects. About 40 [U.S.] states now have incentives. Many Americans looked at Europe and decided to stay home. Our incentives have put us back on the map.”<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Czech incentives were introduced in June 2010 for film and television projects. The impact was not big at first, but business has been increasing and has grown four- or five-times higher since 2010. The Czech Film Industry Support Programme offers a 20-percent rebate on qualifying Czech spend and 10 percent on qualifying international spend. Eligible spending may not exceed 80 percent of a project’s total budget. The rebate is available to features with a run time of at least 70 minutes and to TV episodes with a run time of at least 40 minutes per episode. The program had CZK 500 million (€18.2 million) in incentives on offer in 2013.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Czech Republic had an unusually good year in 2013. Producers from the U.S., the U.K., Denmark, Norway, South Korea, France and Germany filmed projects there. Most of these were historical TV series. The production of BBC Worldwide’s series The Musketeers<\/em> spent €8.5 million, more than half its total budget, in the Czech Republic with local partner Czech Anglo Productions. BBC is now back to shoot the second season.<\/p>\n \n\tThe third and final season of Borgia<\/em> was also shot on the Barrandov Studios backlot and in several locations around the country. The series is a co-production between Atlantique Productions, ETIC Films, Beta Film and Film United.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter shooting two seasons in the Czech Republic, the third season of Tandem’s detective series Crossing Lines<\/em> will be shot there this year. <\/p>\n \n\tLast year, Sirena Film was the local service partner for the Norwegian series The Heavy Water War<\/em>, produced by Filmkameratene with NRK. With a bit of poetic justice after the loss of productions over previous years, Czech locations doubled for London as well as German and Norwegian settings.<\/p>\n \n\t <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" PREMIUM: Continuing our series on production incentives across Europe, Jay Stuart looks at how the Czech Republic is attracting international producers. “You need to be able to offer tax breaks or cash rebates or some form of incentive because incentives are now being offered in so many places that if you don’t have them, you …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-top-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n