This year’s AFM has seen a flood of Australian genre films brought to market repped by blue chip UK sales agents, including Cornerstone’s psychological horror From Below, Architect’s Second World War horror Dogs Of War plus Bankside’s creature feature Croak and survival thriller Hot Mother.
So why are UK sellers looking 10,000 miles away for their fix, as opposed to closer to home?
“We’ve gravitated towards Aussie films because the territory represents a good cross-section of independent ‘needs’,” said Architect’s Max Pirkis, also selling Australian horror Stake Out and thriller Posthumous, “English-language films, screen agencies that champion genre, and a strong set of producers who’ve enjoyed that backing for some time and so have a ready pipeline of quality and highly developed projects… We don’t quite see the equivalent flow of genre films, and infrastructure to construct them, from other territories, including the UK.”
Comments
It’s because the screen agencies in Australia are finally all investing in genre films. So the market is getting what it needs from a market that has historically only given them insular dramas and art house stuff. The genre films coming out of Australia are now subsidised, so there is also no risk to the sales company that they won’t go into production.