British Cinema

This is England is a British drama film written and directed by Shane Meadows. The film won the Alexander Korda Award for Best British Film at the 2007 British Academy Film Awards. It also won the Best Film category at the 2006 British Independent Film Awards. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 93% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 89 reviews.

Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 86/100, based on 23 reviews".

This made it the tenth best reviewed film of the year.
In the opening Weekend, it grossed:

$18k (USA) (29 July 2007)
£207,k (UK) (29 April 2007)

There was an estimated budget of £1.5m

The production companies involved were: Warp Films, Big Arty Productions, EM Media

A low budget (1.5m) was used in this film, which gives an indication about the film; it’s almost certainly an Indie film (not owned by a bigger company). Working title is a subsidiary of a bigger company. Means you can’t have stars as there is not enough money to pay them.

He did not want a higher budget as the higher the budget, the lower the creative control. More than half the budget came from the UK film council (government organisation). However it can go lower, Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee, also by Shane Meadows, had a budget of £48k.

The gant rule: If you have a film that’s a hit in the UK and one that’s a hit in the US, It will be shown on 10 times more screens in the US, and make 10 times more money than in the UK.

Working title use famous actors in almost all their movies, as this makes it viewable in more countries. American actors are often used because of this. Warp have not used any famous actors in their films.

5 months in America and gained £300k, however, its peak was only 14 screens at a time. For America, This is England was not at all a mainstream film. It was treated like an Arthouse film.

Working title reinforce the impression that English films must include areas such as London and middle class characters, unlike This is England.

This is England is a social realist film. They typical do not have stars or special effects, they are almost documentary like in style. This makes them a difficult sell.

UK distributers used Optimum Releasing (now studio canal, and not indie anymore) In the Us, it was distributed by IFC.

Box office: £2.1m for UK, $330k for US, and Worldwide £5.1m.