The boom is real. The ambition is bigger.
When the Robbie Williams biopic “Better Man” needed to recreate Stoke-on-Trent – a gritty English industrial city with little obvious resemblance to the Pacific – the production simply decamped to Queensland. “Nothing looked like Australia and we were able to execute that,” says Craig McMahon, CEO of Forte Corp Holdings, which co-financed the film. “And that was still an Australian film, and it was made here. We have the capabilities to do that here.”
It is not the first time Australia has pulled off that trick. When Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” needed to rebuild Memphis from scratch – including a five-block recreation of Beale Street on a former Gold Coast city dump – the production did it entirely in Australia, with 100% Australian visual effects work. The recreations were so convincing that visitors from Tennessee believed the film had shot on location. Speaking at an MPA seminar at the Tokyo International Film Festival last October, “Elvis” producer Schuyler Weiss – who has worked with Luhrmann for two decades across “Australia,” “The Great Gatsby” and “Elvis” – described the incentive system that makes it possible as one of the most sophisticated and accessible in the world.
Of 174 titles entering production during the period, 71 were Australian – down from 89 the prior year – with local productions accounting for 40% of total expenditure, against 50% in 2023-24. Spend on Australian titles rose 14% to AUD1.1 billion ($786 million), driven by a cluster of high-budget features and subscription-platform productions. Across TV and VOD, titles, hours and overall spend all declined from the prior year, with cost-per-hour the only metric to increase – a pattern consistent with a premium-content push and mounting production cost pressures. Spend on children’s programming fell to AUD34 million ($24 million), 41% below the prior year.
“It’s a recalibration time for the industry,” McMahon says. “To get a project green lit, the commerciality of the project really needs to stack up. The pre-sale market isn’t as strong as it was before.”
Screen Producers Australia CEO Matthew Deaner reads the shifting composition of the industry as an invitation to sharpen strategy. “There’s a tension sometimes between a lot of international work and local work,” he acknowledges, noting that the drop from 89 to 71 Australian titles entering production is a figure the sector is watching closely. But he is equally clear that the current moment presents opportunities. “We’ve got to be mindful of expanding that work so that we get the benefit of intellectual property development and growth and export that comes with local story.”
That IP question has become one of the sector’s animating policy discussions. Deaner argues that long-term resilience depends on Australian production companies retaining ownership of what they make – pointing to the “Bluey” model, where a business holding elements of the production in its DNA has been able to generate ongoing work from that foundation, as the template worth building toward. “Building intellectual property is part of that story,” he says. “We stabilised our industry through having businesses that own the work that they generate and can generate other work from their own resources and not be constantly in service.”
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For Emmanuel Pappas, founder of Sydney-based Asia Pacific Pictures, who returned to Australia after years at Warner Bros. in Los Angeles, the answer lies beyond Australia’s borders. “Co-productions are really the thing that the country is really focusing on, because you’ve got to get your project beyond the small market size that we have,” he tells Variety. Australia holds active treaty relationships with Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the U.K., with a newer treaty with India beginning to generate activity. Pappas is currently structuring a tri-party agreement spanning Australia, Asia and Europe – a model he says transforms a project’s commercial proposition. “What that allows us to do is be a European film, and tap into their domestic release benefits, plus the European release benefits, which makes us a much more attractive project for sales,” he says. “That’s really how Australian producers need to think.”
He sees a broader regional role for Australia in Asia Pacific – one that would allow local producers to participate in lower-budget projects in markets like Indonesia or Malaysia. ‘There’s a reciprocal benefit to both industries and enriching both cultures,’ Pappas says. “I keep advocating for government to really look at that and build out some mechanisms in place – allowing Australia to really be the nexus within Asia Pacific.”
The workforce dimension is addressed directly by the Production Infrastructure and Capacity Analysis (PICA) conducted by Olsberg•SPI and released by Screen Australia recently. The study affirms Australia’s standing as a world-class hub for high-value content while identifying four areas requiring focused attention: business scalability, skills development, career progression and infrastructure coordination. For below-the-line physical production, the roles where hirers see the greatest capacity need are Line Producer, Location Manager, Production Accountant, Production Coordinator and Production Manager. In post, digital and visual effects (PDV) and animation, VFX Supervisor, Technical Director and Editor are among those flagged.
Nearly half (47%) of physical production respondents had industry tenures exceeding 20 years – a reflection of the sector’s depth of experience, and equally a prompt to invest in the next cohort of mid-career talent moving through the pipeline. The skills transfer between large international productions and local filmmaking is one model already demonstrating results: after “Elvis” wrapped on the Gold Coast, Weiss produced the smaller Australian feature “How to Make Gravy,” giving department members from the big production their first head-of-department roles on a feature film.
Deaner frames the talent development argument in terms of what the industry needs to sustain the gains it has made. “You can’t easily put a first-time director on a very large budget project,” he says. “So we’ve got to make sure there are always smaller projects – potentially projects that don’t carry that level of risk that a big-budget project can have – to train and develop the sector.”
Screen Australia COO Grainne Brunsdon says the findings are a resource the industry is well-positioned to act on. “Australia’s screen sector is in a moment of strength and strategic opportunity,” she says. “We face many of the same headwinds as the global industry, but our approach is to view these as opportunities where we can and seek out new areas of collaboration. It certainly helps that we are trusted globally, offer world-class incentives, facilitate a celebrated co-production program, and that demand to work with Australian crews and creatives remains strong.”
Infrastructure is expanding alongside ambition. A new studio facility in Perth is operational. New South Wales is fielding expressions of interest for a second major studio in Sydney. PDV expenditure reached AUD 762 million ($545 million) in 2024-25, up 33%, reflecting consistent demand for Australia’s post-production capabilities. The PICA study recommends building on that base through better coordination on sound stage planning and preservation of industrial land for screen-related storage – proactive steps rather than reactive ones.
Streaming regulation adds a further dimension. Local content quotas for platforms became policy in November 2025, and the industry is now assessing their practical effect. McMahon is straightforwardly supportive. “Any step that government is making to help ensure that local drama spend from streamers is being nurtured can only be a positive thing,” he says. Deaner frames the next phase as one of monitoring and refinement: “We want to make sure it’s also working. It’s fit for purpose.” Pappas, meanwhile, sees the quota framework as a potential catalyst for co-production, arguing that projects structured across multiple territories will satisfy local content obligations while opening up international markets simultaneously. “From a streamer point of view, I think it’s going to only amplify the opportunity for streamers to do a project which works in multiple territories that they service.”
What ties these threads together is a shared confidence that the structural conditions are in place – and that the work now is about channelling them with intent. For Pappas, that means building distribution bridges so that public investment in Australian stories travels further and returns more. For Deaner, it means protecting the IP that underpins business sustainability across production cycles. For McMahon, it means expanding financing capacity so that more projects reach the screen regardless of market conditions.
The record numbers reflect a sector that has done the hard work of making itself indispensable to the global production landscape. The conversation in Australia right now is about what it does with that position.
From Variety US