Milla Jovovich, Nastassja Kinski and Wes Bentley rush the silver screen later this year in the gold fever epic The Claim, directed by Michael Winterbottom. While the lead characters compromise their futures over the dream of Canadian gold, the film’s investors pledged their financial support to a deal model that provides up to one-third of a project’s funds via rock solid Canadian and u.k. government support.

This financing model, which conforms to the official Canada-u.k. coproduction treaty, allows producers to combine benefits from both British sale-and-leaseback financing and Canada’s federal and provincial tax credits. It’s significant coin. Martin Katz, president of Grosvenor Park Film Financing Corporation in Toronto and executive producer of The Claim, says over a year, between Cdn$1.5 billion (us$975 million) and Cdn$2 billion (us$1.3 billion) of production is certified British. Of that total, producers see up to Cdn$200 million (us$130 million) via the sale and leaseback. ‘Grosvenor Park,’ he says, ‘is responsible for [arranging for] about 50% of that. We brought sale-and-leaseback financing to about Cdn$1 billion [us$650 million] of British production in the last year.’ (See also News story on sale-and-leaseback extension, page 9).

The financing for The Claim, budgeted at Cdn$30 million (us$19.5 million), was handled by Grosvenor Park, which also has offices in London. Katz says although tax-assisted structured financing such as that used in this deal has been available in Canada in one form or another since the 1970s and is ‘increasingly popular’ in Europe, it has not been available in the u.s. since the mid-1980s.

Katz describes the model used on The Claim as ‘off balance sheet financing’ because it does not involve the sale of any worldwide territories; in other words, does not involve the production’s copyright.

Katz says sale-and-leaseback financing generates about 10% of the budget for qualifying productions. Britain’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport (dcms) evaluates projects for British content, as if it were Canada’s cavco (Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office) and Telefilm Canada rolled into one. ‘The compelling thing is that British qualifying films include Anglo-Canadian coproductions under the treaty. Grosvenor Park has done many of these and in some cases has also been either the British or Canadian coproducer.’

Katz says they’re ‘compatible with cavco tax credits and Telefilm Canada rules for the administration of the treaty. By combining tax credit benefits in Canada with the sale and leaseback in the u.k., the total tax-assisted financing that we can bring to a film can normally be between 20% to 30% of the budget.’

mgm is handling the u.s. theatrical release on The Claim, while Pathe holds rights for England and France, and Alliance Atlantis will distribute in Canada. Coproducers are Revolution Films of London (Andrew Eaton, producer) and DB Entertainment of Calgary, Canada (Doug Berquist, coproducer). Other cast include Sarah Polley and Peter Mullan.

Grosvenor Park has also engineered a sale-and-leaseback deal for the 22 x 60-minute Fireworks Entertainment adventure series Queen of Swords, also a British-Canadian coproduction. While The Claim was shot on location in Canada, Queen of Swords was shot in Spain. ‘The financing we bring is not limited to either Canadian productions or productions located in Canada,’ says Katz of the Cdn$32-million (us$21-million) series, starring Tessie Santiago. CanWest Global is airing in Canada.

Grosvenor Park also maneuvred ‘a very complex deal’ to finance Starhunter, a Cdn$50-million-plus (us$32.3-million-plus), 44 x 60-minute sci-fi series coproduced by Canada (Danforth Studios), the u.k. (Grosvenor Park Productions u.k.) and France (Le Sabre, a Canal Plus subsidiary). Starhunter shot in New Brunswick, Canada. The additional benefit of treaty coproductions is that they qualify ‘not only as Canadian content for Canadian broadcasters, but also as European content, which is significant to broadcasters and distributors operating throughout the European community,’ says Katz.