Public Spending More On Films

According to the British Film Institute, the British public is spending more money than ever before to watch feature films in the cinema, at home on video or pay-television.

More than £1.8bn was spent at the box office or on watching films at home last year compared with £435m in 1983, according to the Institute’s Film and Television Handbook. Wilf Stevenson, director of the BFI, called on Stephen Dorrell to come up with a film industry policy, to make the British film industry internationally competitive. One solution, it is suggested, could be to divert revenue from the ITV franchise payments into a “Film on Three” fund to pay for films on the third channel.