Canadian screenwriters fear the domestic sector is reaching a breaking point when it comes to financing feature film development.

“What we’re seeing is a world where the value of the script and the value of creative work is as undervalued as I’ve ever seen,” Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) president Bruce Smith (pictured right) tells Playback Daily.

Smith says the WGC estimates that up to 20% of Canadian feature films produced each year are written under the Guild’s jurisdiction, meaning that the other 80% of films don’t have minimum script fee protections.

“There is a sense that more and more of the cost of development is moving down the ladder and onto the writers,” says Jason Filiatrault (Entanglement), WGC Councillor for the Pacific-Western region.

He says in the past writers have seen producers option a script without a fee, but more recently he’s seen the same for treatments and first drafts. He adds that writers are sometimes asked to write scripts with the promise of being paid when a film goes into production.

Filiatrault (pictured left) says the problem doesn’t fall on the feet of indie producers, who themselves are sometimes waiving their own fees to finance a feature, but the lack of funding within the current system, which was exacerbated with the end of the Harold Greenberg Fund (HGF).

Founded in 1986, HGF provided development funding in English Canada for story options, first to third script drafts and packaging, with screenwriters eligible to apply for funding directly. Former operator Bell wound down operations in 2021 after it completed its requirement to support HGF for seven years as part of a tangible benefits package from its acquisition of Astral Media.

Matt Code (pictured right), president of Toronto prodco Wilding Pictures, says HGF was instrumental in the creation of the Sook-Yin Lee film Paying For It, which will have its world premiere in the Toronto International Film Festival’s Platform programme on Friday (Sept. 6), thanks to the funding provided to option the graphic novel it’s based on.

“There was no way that film would have been made… if we didn’t have the funding at that time. We didn’t qualify for Telefilm at the time, and I couldn’t afford to option the book from Chester [Brown],” he says.

Code notes that provincial bodies such as Ontario Creates have some funds available for development, but not at the level of paying for full scripts.

Screenwriter Meredith Vuchnich says HGF executives such as Alan Bacchus were a key part of the development process because of the notes they provided, recalling the “generous” feedback on the script for Beans, which she co-wrote with director Tracey Deer.

“I don’t think we can overstate the loss to development that the Harold Greenberg Fund was and something has to come along to fill that gap,” says Doug Taylor (Splice), WGC’s Quebec region delegate.

In fact, there was an immense push from the HGF board of directors to find someone to fill that gap.

John Galway, former HGF president, says part of the problem was the timing, as there was a lot of economic uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And with legislation around the Broadcasting Act still making the rounds in Parliament, it was too early for streaming services to commit to that level of investment.

“A lot of the discussion was around the risk that you might support 70 projects a year and 15 of them would end up becoming films three or four years down the road, so the return on investment from a money standpoint was a challenge,” says Galway.

As it stands, one of the main financing resources for development is Telefilm Canada via its Development Program.

Financing through the program is funneled via four streams. The Prequalified stream gives automatic funding to 125 production companies per year, providing between $100,000 to $35,000, based on their performance ratio. The General, Indigenous, and Black People and People of Colour streams provide up to $35,000.

Francesca Accinelli (pictured left), Telefilm’s SVP, program strategy and industry development, says the funder strategically increased the funding caps in the previous fiscal year in anticipation of last year’s Writers Guild of America strike, largely in the Prequalified stream.

She says the funding caps were reverted back to their levels for the current application round, with the funds diverted to the Production Program to help offset rising costs.

However, the overall budget amount has remained largely stable. According to Telefilm’s annual reports, the Development Program had a budget of $7.6 million in 2021-22 and $8.9 million in 2022-23. Accinelli estimates the budget was $10 million in 2023-24 (the year the funding caps were raised) and will be about $9 million in 2024-25.

Telefilm has introduced the Springboard initiative this year, which was created to support projects that didn’t make the cut for the Production Program, but showed promise.

“We want them to keep that momentum to come back in the fall for the next round of production… let them jump over the next phase of development and just focus on getting ready for production,” says Accinelli, noting that the initiative will support about 30 projects.

“We can’t guarantee they’re going to get financed in the next round of production, but it’s going to give them time to be better prepared and ready to be more competitive amongst the volume of [applications] that we’re receiving,” she says.

Accinelli says Telefilm will work with the WGC to evolve the Development Program, noting that it’s one of the first programs being evaluated as part of the fund’s ongoing strategic review. She says Telefilm is also looking at aligning with other provinces and training organizations to better understand where the development opportunities are.

Filiatrault says past programs such as the National Screen Institute’s Script to Screen program were “incredibly useful” to develop scripts and connect writers with broadcasters and distributors. His 2017 feature Entanglement went through the program in 2014.

Taylor says the loss of HGF, and the lack of financiers stepping up to replace it, shows that government intervention is needed to require development support going forward. Galway concurs, noting that even now, with Bill C-11 receiving Royal Assent and the pandemic-fueled shutdowns in the rearview, the current industry turndown has stalled any progress on reviving HGF.

However, for writers, there’s a deep level of urgency to act as soon as possible. WGC executive director Victoria Shen (pictured right) says the Guild has been advocating to the CRTC to ensure Canadian writers are supported in the broadcasting system, and fought to keep fair wages in recent negotiations with the CMPA, but there’s a limit on what can be done without more money in the sector.

“I feel like there’s a real opportunity for somebody who wants to have a cultural impact in this country to step in and provide a budget for the cheapest part of the film industry process,” says Vuchnich.

“As an industry, if you start to feel like you’re hitting the bottom, you know you can push and there’s nowhere else to go but up,” says Smith. “Hopefully the entire industry will feel the bottom is coming and push against it and find our way out of that. And I think development is the cheapest, easiest fuel to shoot that rocket back to the surface.”

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