Annie Murray: New Zealand Film Commission CEO on the search for more international investment partners

Donald Trump's tariffs continue to loom over the film industry. 

The New Zealand Film Commission is embarking on an international trade mission of its own. 

The team is headed to India, the UK, and France to look for new investment partnerships and international productions. 

Chief Executive Annie Murray told Mike Hosking co-production is on the rise, despite the tariffs. 

He says there's a lot of business happening and they're looking ahead to Cannes, where they'll conduct more meetings to grow the industry. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
At a time when the New Zealand film industry is
standing by for what an earthy Trump terrified here actually means.
The Film Commission, as it turns out, is out in
the world on a trade mission. They're in India, the
UK and France to look for new investment partnerships and
international productions. Annie Murray is the Film Commission boss and
is with us from I think it's Brittain any.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Morning, Good morning, Mike Es, I'm in London.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
Do you feel at sea in a world where you
know not what happens tomorrow?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Oh? Look, we are not speculating on the Trump a
terriff's issue. The latest we've heard is that the President
Trump has said he doesn't want to damage the industry
if he wants to sit down with the major studios
and talk about it. And we think that's a good start.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
So is it everything that's talked about? Though, when you
enter a room with anybody to do with film that
did they say things like, oh what about Trump?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
It's coming up. Definitely there is some concern out there,
but everybody's in the same boat. We're all waiting for
detail on this thing. So we're not speculating. We're getting
on with.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Business, how much businesses they're out there at the moment.
Forget the tariffs that they never existed. Are there people
with money out there in the world at the moment
that like what we do and want to do business
with us.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
There definitely is co production is on the rise. That's
a really important part of our industry. We've just come
from India where there are over three thousand films made
every year, all financed with private equity, so that's a
thriving part of the industry. We've just had some excellent

(01:32):
meetings yesterday with the British Film Institute where connecting these
Zealand producers with the UK producers to develop more co production.
So there's certainly a lot of business happening. We're looking
ahead to can next week we will be doing a
lot more meetings and looking to grow this three point

(01:53):
three billion dollar industry for New Zealand.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
What's the cultural divide? So is an Indian movie, for example,
we would be the location versus say a UK movie
where we might put some stars in it and it's
a co lab that on screen looks like a New
Zealand UK thing. You see what I'm saying That.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Goes both ways. Mike. We've got eighteen co production treaties
with jurisdictions around the world. We might shoot in one
market and post produce in another. There might be music
being composed in its third territory. It's a really globally
integrated business and our co production treaties and our EMU

(02:32):
with Australia are super flexible, so we can make the
deal work for the.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Creative fantastic I wish you were with the rest of
the journey. Annie Murray, who is the New Zealand Film
Commission's CEO, read a very interesting piece yesterday about Trump
and the movies, and of course the difference between the
movies and everything else is that the movies are part
of the service's economy. The services economy makes up seventy
percent of the US economy. It's Google, Netflix, Facebook, Hollywood films, insurance,
all that sort of stuff. Whereas his trade war up

(02:58):
until this particular point, has been allegedly about boxes, dolls, pencils,
things like that. So what it alarms them? First of all,
this is driven out by the Hollywood unions. By the way,
this is entirely driven by the union movement in Hollywood,
who have been. Trump is right. It has never come back,
and it's never come back because they had a strike,
and they had a strike on AI and they wanted

(03:19):
more money, and eventually they got more money. But they
got so much more money that they had to lay
a whole lot of people off, and no one wanted
to make money in Hollywood anymore. But the services industry
is not what Trump argues. See previously, Trump argues, when
I send my box to you in China, you charge
me for it. So I'm going to charge you the
same and while I'm mad, and I'm going to charge
everybody ten percent on everything because that's what I do.

(03:39):
Services are different, and that's where it's most obviously a
bargaining chip because it isn't going to work, and he
knows it, and everybody else has worked out that we
know that he knows, and he knows that we know,
and so it will eventually flush through or fingers crossed.
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(04:01):
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