news flash
18 January, 2009
Screenrights pays $15 million to filmmakers in 2 weeks
A record $15 million in Screenrights’ royalties has been paid to filmmakers within the first two weeks of distributing 2008/09 royalties - $3 million more than the previous highest amount for December payments.
Producer Darren Dale from Blackfella Films said the payment their company received for the landmark series First Australians was “invaluable”.
“It allows Blackfella Films to further grow our business,” he said. “Key creatives Rachel Perkins and I can focus on getting more projects into production, supported with additional resources.”
Screenrights Member Services Executive Emma Rogers said the speed with which royalties are being paid can be attributed to the large number of rightsholders registering program details so promptly.
“Members have been excellent at registering as soon as they go into pre-production,” she said. “This makes the distribution process more efficient and administrative overheads lower – which in turn benefits rightsholders because these expenses are deducted from the money we collect.”
“We’d like to thank everyone for their cooperation in registering and urge rightsholders to continue to make sure they get their program details to us as soon as they can.”
Royalties were collected for educational and government copying, retransmission in Australia and from Screenrights International, which administers retransmission and copying royalties from various overseas territories.
Payments during November/December 2009 included:
- $11.08 million in 2009 Australian educational royalties (54.46% of the total to be distributed from this period)
- $1.47 million in 2009 Australian government copying royalties (75.39% of the total)
- $1.68 million in 2009 Australian retransmission royalties (38.33% of the total)
- $525k in 2009 New Zealand educational royalties (43.26% of the total)
In addition, Member Services continued to make payments of royalties collected in previous years.
