How do these "bus movies" make money?

Posted by Careful-Swimmer-2658@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 12 comments

London buses often advertise films that I've never seen anywhere else in the country or on TV or Netflix etc. They're usually a low budget thing that back in the day would have been "straight to VHS". Who's watching them? How do they make their production cost back? Are they some sort of tax scam?

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12 Comments

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Mausandelephant@reddit

OP, are you seeing adverts for West End plays etc and thinking they're adverts for movies?

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Chilton_Squid@reddit

I'd like to know how you propose that making a movie would be a tax scam? Sometimes people make films and TV programmes which, despite their promise, just turn out a bit shit and nobody really watches them. Lots of them don't make any money, but that's just how the industry works. The make enough money on the big successful stuff to bankroll lots of smaller stuff. Also, if you're making an indie film and not paying $20m to some A-lister to voice a cartoon character, you can make them surprisingly cheap.

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edhitchon1993@reddit

Uwe Boll's entire career was built on such a tax scam. [The loophole](https://web.archive.org/web/20060626232726/http://www.cinemablend.com/features/Uwe-Boll-Money-For-Nothing-209.html) which allowed it has (fortunately for the world of cinema) now been closed - but not before he unleashed some really very bad films onto the DVD market.

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tmstms@reddit

I have a parallel answer- tax-related but not a scam. The EU has a scheme where central funding is allocated if the production has an element in three EU countries. When we were in the EU, many part-Brit films benefited from this, though many terrible films 'Europuddings' were also made as a result. Obviously the film industry does get access to a certain number of tax breaks;it's precarious enough as it is....

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KudoUK@reddit

You can get money back from HMRC (about 25%) if your British made movie loses money. I suppose you could artificially inflate costs with fake invoices, make a shit film then claim 25% of those inflated costs back, then when offset against actual costs you’ll get profit. It’s a bit like ‘The Producers’. A lot of effort but applies to budgets up to 15mil so might be worth it if you’re so inclined.

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Chilton_Squid@reddit

Ha yeah that sounds like something you could perhaps just get away with once...

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SuboptimalOutcome@reddit

> making a movie would be a tax scam It's a relatively common scam, [here's an example](https://archive.is/zSk2l) from a few years ago, and [here's an entirely respectable legal firm](https://www.stpaulschambers.com/what-is-film-tax-fraud/) to contact, should anyone's attempted tax scam fail and HMRC come knocking. Basically film costs are massively over inflated resulting in big losses that can be offset against other income and film tax relief.

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YoungGazz@reddit

They become filler for streaming services like Plutotv and freevee

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TheNathanNS@reddit

I have no idea what you're on about here, most bus movie-ads I see are advertising the popular new releases in the cinema.

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th0rw4y_t0rh0w4y@reddit

This is an interesting question because the answer answers many interesting questions too. Ppl will watch it, they dont know its gonna be shit and they will watch it. I assume you are speaking about these Z category movies. Their budget is a couple hundred-thousand so they ll always make a profit no matter how shit. Movies like the Sherlock Holmes London and all the weird fake remakes of huge movies

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tmstms@reddit

Could you give some examples? I will look them up.

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