Irene Gardiner: Screen Production and Development Association on Trump's film tariffs

The film industry is being asked not to push the panic button. 

There's a lot of uncertainty after US President Donald Trump's announcement of a 100% tariff on films produced outside the US. 

In a post on Truth Social, he says the US film industry is ‘dying a very fast death’ as countries offer incentives to lure filmmaking away from Hollywood. 

Screen Production and Development Association President Irene Gardiner told Mike Hosking his terminology is quite confusing. 

She says she doesn't know how Trump will be able to do what he's talking about, but that might become clearer in the next few days. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, the Trump ideology is well and truly landed on
New Zealand shores of the universal team percent on everything
didn't rip your nightey? How about the one hundred percent
on movies made outside America.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Now, I'm not looking to hurt the industry. I want
to help the industry. But they're given financing by other countries.
They've given a lot of things, and the industry is decimated.
If you look at how little is done in this
country now, you know, you think we were the ones
We used to do one hundred not long ago, one
hundred percent. Now we do almost like very little. It's

(00:31):
shuck in.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Screen Production development to Assistant president Associate president Iron Gardeners
with us irene.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Good morning, Good morning mate.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
He's right, isn't he. We subsidize and he wants to
balance the playing field.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
Well, he's not entirely right, because actually the problem he's
trying to solve, which is building in particular Hollywood La
back up again. There's a few contributing factors there to
do with COVID strikes, the fires, and it'd actually be
different ways to do that, including looking at their own
incentives and the type of films they make and so

(01:04):
on and so forth. So he's he's kind of that's
the problem I think he's trying to solve because he
hasn't quite got his green dusty terminology right. He's actually
talked about films not made in America getting the terriffle
that would actually not be American films that shoot somewhere else,
that would actually be you know, like a New Zealand
film like Tina couldn't go there. But I don't think

(01:25):
that's what he means. What he means is the big
films that are taking an incentive.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Do you actually know? I mean, no one knows what
he means, does he? So what happens you shoot? You
shoot something in Los Angeles, then you flick a bit
of it off to wetter and then they finish it
off somewhere else and then they take it back to America.
Now is that American made or not?

Speaker 3 (01:42):
Well, see, that's still an American movie, it's still in
American production. That's whereas terminology is quite confusing. And so
I don't know how you could actually do what he
is talking about doing. And I guess that's what will
shake down in the next few days. And that's why
I would tell you our members and others an industry
folk not to panic, but you know, people do get

(02:03):
very unsettled because the American movie is either shooting here
or post producing here, you know, using wetter special effects
or whatever. That's a huge chunk of our screen industry money.
And you wouldn't want to lose that, and you wouldn't
want to lose the training grounds and all of that,
and it won't actually help solve the problem. And people
don't only shoot in a territory because of the incentives.

(02:24):
I mean they shoot in New Zealand sometimes because of
physical things. We've got landscape things. So it's all a
little confusing. And I would, you know, just because a
lot of our producer members are local producers, I would
just say the reason you need to keep local strong
because international can be very variable.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Good on you iring listen once it shakes down, we
know what the hell's going on. We'll get you back
on and have a longer conversation. For more from the
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