Julian Dennison plays Ricky Baker in Taika Waititi's Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Picture / Supplied.
More layoffs are tipped in the media sector, as the New Zealand Film Commission restructures itself. Is it time for an all-encompassing review of screen-funding public agencies - and a merger? A screen industry legend thinks so.
Up to 21 roles are understood to be affected in a major restructure at the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC), which faces funding cuts and concerns within the industry about its performance.
The shake-up follows a sombre week in the New Zealand media industry, with the announcement of the likely closure of Newshub, a $16.7 million half-year loss for TVNZ and layoffs in the Stuff sports department. All major commercial media companies have been in careful cost management mode.
The NZFC - the public agency which invests in and promotes New Zealand feature and short films and filmmakers as well as promoting Aotearoa as a filming location - has 53 staff, according to its 2023 annual report.
The commission is set to receive $30.2m in funding this financial year, from a range of sources including the Lottery Grants Board ($21.5m), the Ministry of Culture and Heritage (MCH) ($5.4m) and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) ($1.3m).
However, according to a ministerial briefing paper in November, that funding represents a 10 per cent cut from 2022/23, with Lottery Grant Board funding reduced by $2.1m and the MCH funding “static”.
The commission told the Government that it was “now allocating reserves to maintain [the] current programme” but that “change is necessary”.
In a statement, NZFC chief executive Annie Murray confirmed the commission had started consulting employees on a confidential restructuring proposal.
The commission refuses to say how many staff are involved in the process - or the proposed number of layoffs - but a source understood 21 roles would be affected.
According to the NZFC’s most recent annual report, annual personnel costs were $6.48m. Senior team remuneration totalled $2.23m.
“Over recent months we have heard from all our stakeholders that the way the Film Commission is organised and how we work needs to evolve to better meet expectations,” said Murray, who became CEO last year.
“In a rapidly evolving industry with new challenges, new technologies and growing competition, we need to make sure that we are relevant, we are focused, and we use our resources to target how we can best add value to an industry of significant importance to New Zealand and New Zealanders.”
One of our most respected screen veterans, John Barnett - the former head of South Pacific Pictures and the man behind hits such as Whale Rider, Footrot Flats, Sione’s Wedding, and The Brokenwood Mysteries, among many more - believes it is time for a complete review of all screen funding agencies including the NZFC, New Zealand on Air and Te Mangai Paho.
A review is especially important, he says, in light of the proposed closure of Newshub, other production cutbacks at Warner Bros. Discovery and the cost pressures on TVNZ.
As Media Insider revealed on Friday, there are no sacred cows as TVNZ reviews its costs - including possible production cutbacks on shows such as Shortland Street.
Barnett has crunched numbers to show that between 2020 and 2023, the NZFC spent about $85 million on more than 50 films.
The New Zealand cinema audience for these, he said, was about 932,000 with a total box office of about $13.9m.
“That was a woeful 3 per cent of the total New Zealand box office with an enormous NZFC admin overhead which clearly chose non-performers - about five films did over $1.5m or 100k admissions; 90 per cent took almost nothing.”
While he had been making films before the establishment of the NZFC - and was an advocate for its establishment - he believed the current structure was an indulgence.
He said some recent NZFC-funded projects would not need to have been produced for cinema, “but they would have played quite well on television”.
“You might not have spent so much money making them and you’d have bigger audiences.”
Barnett has floated the idea of merging NZFC and New Zealand On Air (NZOA) “and using criteria which enable some films to get a cinema release, but most play out on home screens”.
NZOA, which funds television and digital productions and a range of other media sector initiatives, has 31 staff. It had funding expenditure in 2023 of $163.5 million.
Barnett believes we need one over-arching funding agency to reflect modern-day audiences’ behaviour, rather than the historic television and cinema funding split.
“I think it’s essential. The people who consume the content - the audience - don’t see a difference, it’s all screen. And the people who make it are the same. In most countries, there wouldn’t be a separation.
“If you had one organisation that did it all, it doesn’t need to have separate film and TV arms. If you’ve got a proposal, you take it in and say this is where I intend to screen it and this is how I intend to reach an audience.
“They don’t have to have huge audiences. It’s not just about making blockbusters. You turn up and say, here’s the four or five local distributors and here’s an offer from all of them with how much they’ll pay and that’s how projects [come to fruition].”
Commission staff might say that wouldn’t allow for breakthrough films, says Barnett. But he says there hasn’t been a breakthrough for years.
According to the commission’s ministerial briefing paper, the top five highest-grossing New Zealand-produced movies of all time are Hunt for the Wilderpeople (released in 2016), Boy (2010), The World’s Fastest Indian (2005), Whale Rider (2002) and Sione’s Wedding (2006).
There was a fundamental difference between the two agencies, as well, in that NZOA required a commitment from a platform to screen content “whereas the Film Commission says we’ll fund this because we think it might do well”.
“But there are plenty of situations where distributors have told me that they will pass on projects. They’ve said, no one’s going to go and see it. Nobody did go and see it.”
Barnett’s call comes amid the fallout of Warner Bros. Discovery’s announcement it plans to close Newshub and cut back on any of its own spending on local productions.
He believes one agency could also be responsible for a pool of current affairs funding - as NZOA does now - including looking at projects such as shared newsgathering resources.
The Herald revealed on Friday that Warner Bros. Discovery had taken a proposal to TVNZ and RNZ earlier in February to set up a joint news service.
The proposed news agency would have supplied stories, including video packages, to all three organisations - helping them reduce people costs. The agency would essentially have operated like the old NZPA newspaper model - a central hub providing coverage of “commodity” style news.
In other words, rather than the three organisations sending three separate teams to cover the same story or an event, one team would do it for all three companies and their platforms.
However, TVNZ’s board rejected the idea just one day after its chair Alastair Carruthers and CEO Jodi O’Donnell met with Warner Bros. Discovery’s New Zealand boss Glen Kyne and RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson.
One week later, on Wednesday last week, Kyne announced the proposal to close Newshub in its entirety, with the loss of about 300 staff.
In a statement last week, TVNZ said there would have been “significant cost” and risk with the newsgathering project.
Barnett expects plenty of feedback to the idea of one funding agency.
“Of course,” says Barnett, “the ‘film industry’ will go berserk, but making content that no one sees is totally unrewarding to the makers, but also a luxury we can’t afford if the cost is loss of multiplicity of points of view about critical aspects of our society.”
Annie Murray said: “The New Zealand Film Commission has a proud history of influence and delivery in support of an industry that we have seen grow, develop, and succeed and now it’s time for us to change so that we are set up to deliver well on our strategic priorities, achieve results within our very constrained funding environment and – most importantly of all – ensure we can properly engage with, support and deliver for the film industry into the future.”
She said the NZFC’s confidential, two-week consultation process over the proposed restructure would wrap up on Friday, March 8, “after which feedback will be considered before any further decisions are made”.
“My focus for the coming weeks is on listening to our teams’ feedback on our proposed changes. The commission will provide further updates after we have heard from our people and considered their feedback.”
Meanwhile, in a statement last week, NZOA said it had started conversations with Warner Bros. Discovery about currently funded and pending future content for Three and ThreeNow.
“NZ On Air currently has $30m in funding committed for content yet to screen on Three and ThreeNow. The majority of these contracts are with independent production companies. These funds are progressively drawn down against milestones.”
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