Scotland's film industry should look to Malta for success

The Herald Scotland

2 days ago

But while the two latest films in the dinosaur franchise were partially filmed on the tiny Mediterranean island, this cinema industry revival was honed through gladiatorial combat and Napoleonic wars.
Scotland may not have such great weather to attract film-makers as Malta, with its 300-days-a-year sunshine, but it does have some of the most beautiful scenery in the world.
And there is surely a lesson here to be learned about how the smallest country in the EU has boosted its economy by a billion pounds in five years just through bringing Hollywood to its shores.
Malta's film commissioner, Johann Grech, is the first to admit he has a lot to thank Ridley Scott for.
The English film director first chose the island for the little known disaster movie, White Squall, in 1995, before returning four years later to re-create ancient Rome for the international cinema triumph, Gladiator.
There was then a 22-year-gap before the Return of Ridley to film Napoleon in 2021, and Gladiator 2 in 2023.
By then Grech had introduced a generous cash rebate scheme which allowed filmmakers to recoup 40% of their production costs.
That's a lot of money, you might say, but it's far outweighed by the benefit to the local economy through the multiplier effect, an economics term whereby one person's spending becomes another person's income.
We all know the saying about a film set being like an army on the move.
Well, it's also been said that an army marches on its stomach, so you can imagine the benefits to the food and restaurant trade on Malta by the making of a film like Napoleon, to whom the remark is attributed.
In five years the film industry has generated a billion pounds for the Maltese economy through supporting industries such as hotels, food, retail and transportation.
Even agriculture, forestry and fishing saw a significant uplift.
More than £500 million of that came in one year, 2023, when 18% of Malta's economic growth was through film production.
This was the year of the making of Gladiator 2 for which, as far as recreating Rome went, was Gladiator 1 on steroids.
The set was nearly five miles long with a Colosseum replica built inside Fort Ricasoli, with its limestone walls, that was 46 feet high (it was doubled digitally later).
Filmmaking on Malta is now an all-year-round industry. There have obviously been big movies made there over the years; Midnight Express,
Popeye, The Count of Monte Cristo, Raise the Titanic, Troy, Munich, World War Z and Captain Phillips to name a few.
But they were few and far between. When shooting was finished, film workers on the island had to find other jobs.
There are currently eight productions filming across 50 locations, the most that the island can sustain at any one time.
In April there were another eight, in May another eight and the same in June.
That's a conveyor belt of film crews, some Hollywood, some British, some made-for-TV, some reality TV.
They chose the island not just for its landscapes and historic architecture but because of the money that can made back on what they spend.
The cash rebate scheme was introduced in 2005, initially set at only 20%.
For the first 14 years the industry saw a growth of 26%, but this jumped to 76% when Grech raised it to 40% in 2019.
Scotland has a cash rebate scheme but it's only set at 25%, which does not put it on a level playing field with other countries when it comes to attracting those big budget productions.
Since 2019, when Malta raised its scheme from 25% to 40%, there have been 169 films with budgets totalling £580m made there.
The cash rebate scheme has its critics, that it gives too much money back to Hollywood instead of local artists. But for every pound spent on the scheme, three are generated back into the economy.
Over five years, this has sustained 15,000 jobs on Malta and there are currently 1000 people employed in the film industry.
Grech wants to double that number through upskilling the workforce so there are enough Maltese crews to service the Ridley Scotts when they pitch up.
To this end, he is a creating a Skills Fund into which every production has to donate 0.5% of their spend, which is expected to invest over a million pounds in three years.
Last month, Russell Crowe was back in Malta, at the third Mediterrane Film Festival, as it celebrated 100 years of film-making on the island.
The Colosseum may have been dismantled, but with Ridley already talking about another Gladiator sequel who's to say it won't be back again.
They say Rome wasn't built in a day, but on Malta they may end up making three.
With Hollywood production down by 40% over the past decade, crews are looking to film abroad and a more attractive rebate as well as its lower labour costs could bring them to Scotland.
Universal's blockbuster, Jurassic World: Dominion was filmed in the UK and Malta because the studio could make £90m in savings.
But there is no reason why Scotland should be tied to England's 25% rate if raising it brings in more business.
As Scottish actor Brian Cox said: 'The reality is films go where they can afford.'
Anthony Harwood is a former foreign editor of the Daily Mail