Speeches by Bryant.

“If you want me to amplify that, this goes to a point I made earlier, and I think Peter Kosminsky made it to you in writing as well—he came in to see me in January. His point was that “Wolf Hall” would struggle to be made now. It was all BBC money. I think others have told you that something like 13 things that have bee…”

“I am trying to avoid too many levies if I possibly can. I am conscious that following the recommendation from this Committee, we are pushing for the levy on arena tickets to support small music venues. Peter Kosminsky has made this argument to me, and I know that some other countries in Europe have something similar, b…”

“If there is evidence, we will look at it. At the moment, we are not looking at changing it, but if people come forward with evidence from the sector then we will look at it.”

“I think Netflix’s “Heartstopper” is also still produced by a British production company, with the rights staying with them.”

“I am going back to my cakeism point. I want a bit of both. Yes, we want American investment, or global for that matter. I would quite like a bit more of Bollywood and a bit more of Nigerian film production to be happening in the UK as well. Ben and Jay said earlier that the UK is the largest film production place in Eu…”

“I cannot find a figure for the square footage of film studio space in Hollywood, but we think that we are pretty much on a par, if not ahead of Hollywood.”

“We do not have a fixed figure.”

“Gainsborough did not survive. Gainsborough was one from the same year as Ealing, but it did not survive.”

“I said earlier that a lot of post-production was going to Canada, because their tax credit was more competitive. That is one of the reasons why we moved ahead with the VFX tax credit. That is precisely the reason why I think we need to keep these things under review, while trying to provide as much continuity as possib…”

““South—bad”, “north—good”, or any other version of that, is certainly not in my mind.”

“I do not know about that. The only point I would make about it is that lots of things that will affect a decision about whether a Hollywood movie is made in the UK or not. Tom Cruise has committed something in the region of £6 billion, I think, in recent years to the UK. One thing that might matter sometimes is whether…”

“There were two things: first, we had a massive explosion because of covid, and then, we had a very sudden contraction because of the end of covid, the strike in the United States and concerns about AI. There was a point last year, for instance, when all the cinema companies were telling me that they would not have anyt…”

“, I know of lots of people in the industry who had absolutely no work for six months, nine months. This is another issue to do with freelancers. I know that that was referred to in the debate yesterday afternoon. We are talking about an industry that relies very heavily on freelancers. There are great benefits to it. L…”

“Well, just having more space means that there is more availability. Over the last few years, we have made it more and more difficult for people to open new studio spaces. Planning laws and so on have intervened, and that makes it difficult even when you have very significant figures like James Cameron supporting partic…”

“I know that we are doing film and high-end television now, but we are also looking at this in relation to music. Are the exams that people sit at school are really the right kind of exams for actually being able to perform and make a living out of playing the guitar, for instance? All those elements of whether we are t…”

“We have been very keen from day one of the new Government to have DCMS work very closely with the Department for Education. When we had a creative industries event in a growth summit in Gateshead a couple of weeks ago, it was good that we had a DFE Minister there, Catherine McKinnell. We have weekly conversations with …”

“It is also partly about the BBC, because it has its own archive and is required to have one. We need to bind them into those conversations as well. This technology has changed so dramatically in such a short time. I remember when I worked at the BBC in Brussels we were showing BBC TV, I think it was “Walking with Dinos…”

“I am not sure that it is for Government to address. I think it is primarily for the industry to address, and I am having those conversations with the distributors and the industry.”

“I will give it four stars out of five, and I think it has transformed the—as I said, years ago everybody just left it all to the BBC and thought that everybody else would float along and get on, and when innovations came along, they would somehow by osmosis manage to absorb it into their systems. Then everybody realise…”

“There is a whole series of things that are not specific to DCMS but apply across every sector. I have already referred to the issues that we have with freelancers and the fact that it is a very freelance-heavy industry. Some of the problems that we have had in the last 12 to 18 months have related to the strike in the …”