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The boom is real. The ambition is greater.

When the Robbie Williams biopic “Better Man” needed to recreate Stoke-on-Trent – ​​a gritty English industrial city with little obvious resemblance to the Pacific – production simply moved to Queensland. “Nothing looked like Australia and we were able to execute it,” says Craig McMahon, chief executive of Forte Corp Holdings, which co-financed the film. “And it was still an Australian film and it was made here. We have the capabilities to make it here.”

It’s not the first time Australia has pulled off that trick. When Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” needed to rebuild Memphis from scratch – including a recreation of five blocks of Beale Street in a former Gold Coast garbage dump – the production did it entirely in Australia, with 100% Australian visual effects work. The reenactments were so convincing that visitors to Tennessee believed the film had been shot on location. Speaking at an MPA seminar at the Tokyo International Film Festival last October, “Elvis” producer Schuyler Weiss – who has worked with Luhrmann for two decades on “Australia,” “The Great Gatsby” and “Elvis” – described the incentive system that makes it possible as one of the most sophisticated and accessible in the world.

That ability to be convincingly anywhere while remaining rooted in Australia captures something essential about the current state of the country’s screen sector. According to Screen Australia’s Drama Report, spending on drama production hit a record A$2.7 billion ($1.93 billion) in 2024-25, a 43% increase on the previous year, of which almost A$1.3 billion ($929 million) came from international productions that almost tripled in value between 2023 and 2024. Producers, financiers and screen bosses speaking with Variety It describes a sector that is seeing genuine momentum while actively shaping a longer-term agenda: harnessing strong economic activity to deepen local storytelling, bolster jobs and establish longer-lasting intellectual property ownership.

The record figure has a clear structural driver. A reformed location offset (now a permanent 30% federal rebate, coupled with state-level incentives of up to 15% depending on territory) has made Australia one of the most cost-competitive major manufacturing destinations in the English-speaking world. Add in a favorable exchange rate and a skilled crew base built over decades of service work and you have, as McMahon says, a net budget that becomes “super affordable, especially in this climate.” Twenty international feature films alone generated a record A$1 billion ($715 million) in local spending in 2024-25, while international TV and VOD titles contributed another A$458 million ($327 million).

Of the 174 titles that entered production during the period, 71 were Australian (up from 89 the previous year), with local productions accounting for 40% of total spend, up from 50% in 2023-24. Spending on Australian titles rose 14% to A$1.1 billion ($786 million), driven by a host of high-budget films and subscription platform productions. Across TV and VOD, titles, hours and overall spend were down year-over-year, with cost per hour being the only metric that increased, a pattern consistent with a push for premium content and increasing pressures on production costs. Spending on children’s programming fell to A$34 million ($24 million), down 41% from the previous year.

“It’s a time of recalibration for the industry,” says McMahon. “For a project to be greenlit, the commerciality of the project really needs to build up. The pre-sale market is not as strong as it was before.”

Screen Producers Australia CEO Matthew Deaner interprets the changing makeup of the industry as an invitation to refine strategy. “Sometimes there is a tension between a lot of the international work and the local work,” he acknowledges, noting that the drop from 89 to 71 Australian titles entering production is a figure the sector is watching closely. But he is equally clear that the current moment presents opportunities. “We have to be mindful of expanding that work to get the benefit of intellectual property development and the growth and export that comes with local history.”

This question of intellectual property has become one of the political debates that animate the sector. Deaner argues that long-term resilience depends on Australian manufacturing companies retaining ownership of what they make, pointing to the “Bluey” model, where a company that has elements of manufacturing in its DNA has been able to generate continuous work from that foundation, as a model worth building towards. “Building intellectual property is part of that story,” he says. “We stabilize our industry by having companies that own the work they generate and can generate other work from that own resource and not be constantly on duty.”

For Emmanuel Pappas, founder of Sydney-based Asia Pacific Pictures, who returned to Australia after years at Warner Bros. in Los Angeles, the answer lies beyond Australia’s borders. “Co-productions are really what the country is focusing on, because you have to take your project beyond the small market size that we have,” he says. Variety. Australia maintains active treaty relations with Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, and a more recent treaty with India is beginning to generate activity. Pappas is currently structuring a tripartite deal spanning Australia, Asia and Europe, a model he says transforms a project’s commercial proposition. “What this allows us to do is be a European film and take advantage of its national release benefits, in addition to the European release benefits, which makes us a much more attractive project for sales,” he says. “That’s really how Australian producers need to think.”

He sees a broader regional role for Australia in Asia Pacific, one that would allow local producers to participate in lower-budget projects in markets such as Indonesia or Malaysia. “There is a reciprocal benefit for both industries and both cultures are enriched,” says Pappas. “I continue to advocate for the government to really look at this and put some mechanisms in place, allowing Australia to really be the nexus within the Asia Pacific.”

The workforce dimension is addressed directly in the Production Capacity and Infrastructure Analysis (PICA) conducted by Olsberg•SPI and recently published by Screen Australia. The study affirms Australia’s position as a world-class hub for high-value content while identifying four areas that require special attention: business scalability, skills development, career progression and infrastructure coordination. For below-the-line physical production, the roles where contractors see the greatest need for capacity are Line Producer, Location Manager, Production Accountant, Production Coordinator, and Production Manager. In post, digital and visual effects (PDV) and animation, VFX Supervisor, Technical Director and Editor are among those indicated.

Nearly half (47%) of physical production respondents had more than 20 years of industry experience, a reflection of the sector’s deep expertise and equally an encouragement to invest in the next cohort of mid-career talent advancing the process. The transfer of skills between big international productions and local cinema is a model that is already showing results: after “Elvis” ended on the Gold Coast, Weiss produced the smaller Australian film “How to Make Gravy”, giving members of the big production’s department their first department head roles in a feature film.

Deaner frames the talent development argument in terms of what the industry needs to sustain the progress it has made. “It’s not easy to assign a new director a big-budget project,” he says. “So we have to make sure that there are always smaller projects – projects potentially that don’t carry the level of risk that a big budget project can have – to train and develop the sector.”

Screen Australia chief operating officer Grainne Brunsdon says the findings are a resource the industry is well positioned to act on. “Australia’s screen sector is at a time of strength and strategic opportunity,” he says. “We face many of the same headwinds as the global industry, but our approach is to see them as opportunities where we can and look for new areas of collaboration. It certainly helps that we are trusted globally, offer world-class incentives, facilitate a celebrated co-production program and that demand to work with Australian teams and creatives remains strong.”

Infrastructure is expanding along with ambition. A new studio in Perth is operational. New South Wales is receiving expressions of interest for a second major studio in Sydney. PDV spending reached A$762 million ($545 million) in 2024-25, an increase of 33%, reflecting continued demand for Australia’s post-production capabilities. The PICA study recommends building on that foundation through better coordination on robust scenario planning and preserving industrial land for display-related storage—proactive rather than reactive steps.

Streaming regulation adds an additional dimension. Local content quotas for platforms became policy in November 2025, and the industry is now assessing their practical effect. McMahon openly supports him. “Any steps the government is taking to help ensure that streamer spending on local dramas is encouraged can only be a positive thing,” he says. Deaner frames the next phase as one of monitoring and refining: “We want to make sure it’s working, too. It’s fit for purpose.” Pappas, meanwhile, sees the quota framework as a potential catalyst for co-production, arguing that projects structured across multiple territories will satisfy local content obligations while opening up international markets. “From a streamer standpoint, I think it will only amplify the opportunity for streamers to make a project that works in multiple territories that they serve.”

What unites these threads is a shared trust that the structural conditions are given and that the work now consists of channeling them with intention. For Pappas, that means building distribution bridges so public investment in Australian stories goes further and yields more. For Deaner, it means protecting the intellectual property that underpins business sustainability across all production cycles. For McMahon, it means expanding financing capacity so that more projects reach the screen regardless of market conditions.

The record numbers reflect a sector that has done the hard work of becoming indispensable to the global manufacturing landscape. The conversation in Australia right now is about what to do with that position.