Lionsgate‘ Robin Hood: Origins, directed by Otto Bathurst and starring Taron Egerton and Jamie Foxx, has an estimated budget of 65 m EUR. Slovakia‘s Spectral already applied for 3 m EUR support at the AVF. The film will be shot in Hungary, Croatia and Slovakia. In Slovakia the 400 people crew will spend 15 m EUR.
The next two films applied as a single project as they are UK/Australian/German coproductions produced by the same companies. Geoffrey Rush will star in Consider Yourself (working title) directed by Vadim Jean. The film will tell the story of Lionel Bart, the famous composer of the 60s, best-know for writting the score for Oliver!.
Maestro, directed by Vaughn Stein, depicts the life of the Austrian piano player Eduard Keller, whose family died during the Holocaust. UK‘s Fourth Culture Films Ltd. and The MOB Film Company Ltd., Australia‘s Scarlet Films PTY Ltd. and Germany‘s MMC Studios Koeln GmbH’s are coproducing with an estimated budget of 12.6 m EUR. Consider Yourself and Maestro applied for a support of 640,000 EUR from AVF. Approximately 3.2 m EUR is expected to be spent in Slovakia.
Slovakia’s company MAYA Production applied at the AVF with a TV miniseries Maria Theresia. This Slovak/Czech/Austrian coproduction just finished its development phase and is ready for production. It will be directed by the Austrian director Robert Dornhelm. The Slovak RTVS is investing 991,200 EUR and the Czech Television and the Austrian ORF are also involved. Hungarian MTV should be on board soon. The estimated budget is approximately 4 m EUR and the expected support from AVF amounts to 400,000 EUR. The series will be broadcast on RTVS during the Christmas holidays of 2017.
Inspector Max, directed by Jaroslav Brabec, is a Slovak/Czech coproduction between Slovakia‘s Trigon Production and RTVS, and the Czech Television. This 13-part criminal series will star Juraj Kukura. The estimated budget is 4.58 m EUR, with 450,000 EUR expected from the AVF. The series will be shot in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland throughout 143 days.
„The Slovak Audovisual Fund, together with the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic are preparing some corrections to the incentives scheme in order to increase its appeal as the interest in this form of support is constantly growing“, Martin Šmatlák, the director of AVF, told FNE.
Slovakia launched the incentives scheme in 2015 and the first project to apply was the TV series Marco Polo 2, a US/Hungarian coproduction.
