Prescience strikes alliance with Atlantic Film Group's Australian arm

Atlantic Film Group and UK financier Prescience have created a strategic alliance to give Atlantic Film Group’s Antipodean financing subsidiary, Atlantic South, access to a facility worth an anticipated $20m per year.

Prescience will provide debt, equity and bridge finance via Atlantic South, for Australian and New Zealand production and co-productions in the $5m-$15m budget range. The company estimates that the Atlantic/Prescience venture could provide up to 60% of a qualifying production’s budget.

Atlantic South, based in Sydney and Auckland, is headed up by Atlantic Film Group founder, Alan Harris.

“Atlantic South is a natural logical progression for the Atlantic Film Group brand,” Harris said in a statement. “Both Australia and New Zealand have a very experienced crew, an established production infrastructure, are English speaking, enjoy stable government and currencies and offer a huge variety of world class locations, but it is the ability to reduce production costs by 40 cents in the dollar within what is already generally regarded as a reasonably low cost production base, that cannot be ignored.”

Prescience MD Tim Smith (pictured) added: “We have worked successfully with Alan Harris on a variety of projects over the years and this agreement will open up an exciting new opportunity for both companies. The quality and commerciality of films being produced in both Australia and New Zealand is attractive both critically and financially and will complement the UK and US product we are helping to finance and, via our sales operation, selling internationally.”