Craig Stobo is a professional director and business owner. He is chairman of the Financial Markets Authority and a member of the New Zealand Initiative..
Yes! It’s time to break down all the ways New Zealand incentivises big US film companies like Time Warner and Amazon and Disney to make their movies in a little archipelago at the bottom of the world. Let’s start with the simplest strategy of all: bribery. Now of course we don’t actually bribe anyone to do anything. It’s just giving people a grant to incentivise them to do something. So! How long have we been not bribing the film industry to work here? It all started when Peter Jackson made some movies about wizards and stuff and everyone lost their mind. The centre-left Helen Clark-led Labour Government decided to offer something called the ‘Large Budget Screen Production Grant’ for future productions. Basically, if you met certain criteria, and you made your film in New Zealand, we’d give you 12.5 per cent of any money you spent here. If you spent $100 million making a movie in New Zealand, the New Zealand government would give you $12.5 million in a big sack wit