Oscars® for a King
The UK Film Council funded film scoops 4 Oscars®
London - 28 February 2011
Commenting on The King's Speech's four Academy Awards®, Tanya Seghatchian, Head of the UK Film Council's Film Fund, which helped finance the film, said:
"The rise of The King's Speech from a British independent film to a worldwide commercial and critical phenomenon is a huge testament to the creators, the cast and everyone involved. It's a magnificent final chapter for the UK Film Council."
Notes to Editors:
The UK Film Council awarded The King's Speech £1,021,080 of Lottery funding. The UK Film Council stands to recoup 100% of its investment plus significant net profits, all of which will be reinvested in the British film industry, creating jobs and supporting UK businesses.
The UK box office gross for The King's Speech currently stands at £39.8 million, making it the highest grossing UK independent film of all time at the UK box office. The worldwide gross for The King's Speech currently stands at $245 million (£156 million).
The King's Speech is the UK Film Council's seventh Oscar®-winning film and comes after previous successes The Constant Gardener, The Duchess, Gosford Park, The Last King of Scotland, Man on Wire and Wasp.
Since its creation in 2000 the UK Film Council has backed more than 900 films, shorts and features, which have won over 300 awards and entertained more than 200 million people around the world, generating £5 for every £1 of Lottery money it has invested.
Our Film Fund funds exciting new British films and develops new filmmakers and our Distribution and Exhibition initiatives get a wider choice of films to audiences throughout the UK. Alongside our role as funder of the British Film Institute, we invest in training British talent, promoting Britain as an international filmmaking location and raising the profile of British films abroad.
British films we have developed and funded include the UK's first 3D film Streetdance 3D, Another Year, Made in Dagenham, Bright Star, Fish Tank, In the Loop, Tamara Drewe, Bend it like Beckham, The Constant Gardener, Gosford Park, Happy-Go-Lucky, The Last King of Scotland, Man on Wire, Nowhere Boy, Red Road, St Trinian's, This is England, Touching the Void, Vera Drake and The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
Current and forthcoming films that we have supported include Phyllida Lloyd's The Iron Lady, Clio Barnard's The Arbor, Terence Davies's The Deep Blue Sea, Peter Mullan's Neds, Joe Cornish's Attack the Block, Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk about Kevin, Justin Chadwick's The First Grader, Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, Ayub Khan-Din's West is West, Gillian Wearing's Self-Made and John Akomfrah's The Nine Muses.
