How India Is Aiming To Lure Back Offshore Production With New 30% Cash Incentive
09.08.2022 - 10:45
/ deadline.com
India has always been a popular destination for international productions, hosting everything from European independent films and British series, most recently ITV’s Beecham House and Netflix/BBC’s A Suitable Boy, to studio movies like Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and Netflix’s Chris Hemsworth-starrer Extraction.
In addition to the country’s oft-touted attractions – a skilled workforce, low costs, stunning landscapes and historical monuments – it also boasts a rich canon of English-language, India-set literature that the story-hungry streamers have been plundering in recent years. Netflix’s A Suitable Boy and The White Tiger, Apple TV+’s Shantaram and HBO’s upcoming seven-part series A Fine Balance, are all based on India-themed novels.
But the country has been pretty much off limits during the pandemic. It had a disruptive although mostly manageable first wave of Covid in 2020, which nonetheless deterred some international shoots, before shocking the world with a devastating second wave and massive death toll that erupted in March/April 2021.
That outbreak hit more than one production. Shantaram, starring Charlie Hunnam as an Australian prison escapee hiding in a Mumbai slum, opted to move to Thailand in mid-2021, after shooting briefly in India in late 2020, due to the worsening Covid situation. The fifth Indiana Jones film was already deep into prepping in Rajasthan when the second wave hit, forcing the production to do an about turn and move to Morocco.
Now Covid is under control and the population vaccinated, India is back open and ready for business, but this time with a few sweeteners. At this year’s Cannes film festival, India’s Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry finally announced the country’s long-awaited