Illustrative Australian-owned productions across four budget tiers — each as a real business case: the story and why it's honestly Australian, its audience, why it will travel, the jobs it creates, the return it can earn against comparable titles, and exactly what made it worth funding.
These are archetypes, not real projects, and no box-office figure is asserted for them. Employment, spend and return figures are derived by applying published, conservative ratios and the pattern of real comparable Australian titles. The point is to show the shape of value a funded project creates — creative, cultural and economic — at a scale a decision-maker can picture.
Full-time-equivalent person-years. Deloitte/SAFC/ABC benchmark, applied to budget, no leverage assumed.
Individual Australians employed. Higher than FTE because most screen roles are short-term (weeks, not years).
Flow-on FTE (transport, catering, accommodation, suppliers, post) — SAFC measured 761 direct → 1,170 total.
Return logic patterned on real comparable titles — not a forecast. IP is producer-owned; the fund shares 10–15% of profit, paid last.
That figure is FTE — full-time-equivalent person-years, the standard economic measure. It is not a headcount. A $2.5M production that equates to ~25 FTE-years actually puts 60–100 individual people to work — because a crew of 50–80 employed for a few weeks each is a large headcount but only a handful of person-years. Both numbers are true; this document shows people employed and FTE side by side so neither misleads.
All figures are indicative, derived for illustration, and rounded. Comparable titles are cited to show the pattern of what Australian work at each budget has achieved — the archetype projects' own returns are illustrative ranges, not predictions. FTE from the 8–12/$1M band; headcount at ~2.5–3.5× FTE; indirect at ~0.5× direct.
Every case study below is a worked example of one test. An independent, arms-length board assesses each project against six things. A project needn't be strongest on all six — but it has to make a compelling, evidenced case across them. This is what "selected" means.
Australian-led, with the IP retained by the Australian producer. The non-negotiable condition of every award.
A distinct voice and a team that can deliver — a project genuinely worth making, on its own terms.
A genuinely Australian story with a clear, identified audience it is actually made for.
Evidence it can find viewers at home and travel internationally — the appetite is real and reachable.
A realistic budget, schedule and team for the ambition — it can actually be made and finished.
Real market signals — a sales agent, broadcaster or distributor interest — that de-risk the bet before a dollar is committed.
Each case study makes these visible: its creative markers, economic markers and distribution proof are exactly what a board weighs — a concrete example of how a project could be assessed and given the green light.
Genre: elevated survival-thriller. The volume tier: high-upside, low-risk, the training ground and the export sleeper hit.
Driving the Nullarbor to a funeral they both dread, a father and his estranged teenage daughter break down at a derelict roadhouse — and slowly realise the family running it has no intention of letting them leave.
A lean, two-location genre film built on dread and distance: a story any Australian who has driven the interior feels in their spine, and any audience on earth understands without a word of translation.
Audience: global genre fans 15–34; festival premiere → theatrical → streamer. Deeply, specifically Australian: the outback isn't set-dressing — it's the antagonist. The specific terror of breakdown, heat and distance is ours, and the film earns its Australianness through place and character.
Australian genre is a proven global export because fear needs no subtitles. Low-budget Australian horror-thrillers have repeatedly broken out worldwide — a contained hook, a distinct landscape, and a strong director are all the international market needs.
Lowest budget = highest possible multiple. On a breakout, a genre film at this level can return many times its cost through theatrical, global streamer and long-tail licensing (the comparable pattern above). Even without a breakout, festival sales and streamer licensing typically recoup a contained budget — and the Australian-owned library keeps earning. Illustrative, patterned on comparables — not a forecast.
A singular directorial voice, a saleable one-line hook, a contained, achievable shoot.
Budget low enough that recoupment is likely and breakout upside is large; strong FTE-per-dollar.
A sales agent's letter of interest and the export record of comparable genre titles — evidence, not hope, at greenlight.
Genre: prestige limited series. The backbone: consistent, exportable, career-sustaining work.
When a teenage girl vanishes from a drought-stricken farming town, the local cop who left twenty years ago under a cloud is forced home to reopen the case that drove her out — and the grief the town buried with it.
A six-hour crime-mystery with a strong central engine and a real Australian world: land under climate and economic pressure, a community that keeps its silences, class fault-lines that never quite heal.
Audience: adult drama 25–54; a domestic broadcaster plus an international SVOD. Specific and honest: rural Australia is drawn with real texture — the drought, the debt, the loyalty and the resentment are the story, told with authenticity and without condescension.
Australian crime and mystery is one of the country's most reliable exports — a proven global appetite for our landscape, our unease and our detectives. This is the budget band and genre that consistently sells into international markets and streamers.
A layered return: a domestic broadcaster pre-sale, an international distribution sale, and SVOD licensing, on top of ongoing library value from an Australian-owned title. Comparable series have combined these into returns that make the tier the sector's dependable workhorse. Illustrative, patterned on comparables — not a forecast.
A proven showrunner, a strong central mystery engine, a distinctly Australian world with universal pull.
Budget the market can return; counter-cyclical work that keeps crews and HODs employed between big shoots.
Broadcaster pre-sale interest and an international sales agent attached at greenlight; comparable-series export record.
Genre: internationally competitive premium series. Compete at the top globally — and keep the IP.
When the patriarch of a Sydney property dynasty dies, a decades-old fraud surfaces — and his three children turn on each other, and on the city their family built, in a war for what's left.
A returning, glossy family-power drama with the scale and finish international audiences expect — the kind of premium show foreign platforms currently make in Australia and own. Here, an Australian producer owns it.
Audience: premium global drama viewers; a major SVOD or premium broadcaster. Australian at its core: money, property, class and the harbour city are a world audiences recognise but rarely see led by Australians — Australian specificity inside a globally legible genre, not a generic show that happens to shoot here.
Premium family-power drama is a global format, and Australian-owned premium series have proven they sell worldwide. Owned here, the international sales, format potential and long-tail library value flow back to Australia instead of offshore.
A global SVOD licence or premium broadcaster deal, international territory sales, returning-series value and format potential — the return profile of premium drama, retained in Australia because the IP is. Fills studio stages for months and keeps senior HODs here. Illustrative, patterned on comparables — not a forecast.
A marquee showrunner and cast, an internationally competitive concept with genuine Australian specificity.
Studio occupancy and senior-crew retention; the reliable premium volume that justifies new infrastructure.
An international distributor or SVOD attached at greenlight; comparable premium-drama global performance.
Genre: elevated survival-adventure, global scale. The once-a-year statement of ambition — tightly de-risked.
When a remote mining town is cut off by a once-in-a-century flood, a helicopter pilot and the strangers she's forced to carry must cross the drowned interior to survive — as the water reveals what the town spent decades keeping buried.
A large-scale, theatrically-ambitious feature that showcases the Australian landscape at global spectacle scale — the shop window that proves Australian-owned production can play at the highest level.
Audience: broad international theatrical + global streamer. Unmistakably Australian: the land itself — its scale, danger and beauty — is the spectacle, in a survival story that needs no cultural translation. Australia as a place of awe, told by Australians who own it.
Highest reach, highest risk — so it carries the tightest conditions: a verified international distribution partner at greenlight, a proven creative lead (or a NAPF-attached one), and a concentration cap so no single title dominates the fund. Prestige success lifts the export ceiling for the whole slate.
Global theatrical plus streamer and a long tail, de-risked by the verified distribution partner and proven lead required before a dollar is committed. The highest-variance tier — which is exactly why it is capped in number and distribution-verified. Illustrative, patterned on comparables — not a forecast.
A proven lead attached, global-scale spectacle rooted in a genuinely Australian landscape and story.
Employs a town's worth of people; anchors studio and post capacity; carries the export ceiling for the slate.
Required at greenlight: a verified international distribution partner — the single biggest de-risking condition in the fund.
The NAPF is a portfolio, weighted to volume and the mid-tier backbone, with the centrepiece capped. An illustrative annual slate — the exact mix is the board's to set — reaches ~27 productions without ever depending on one title.
The NAPF adds to the international productions and co-productions that already shoot in Australia — it doesn't replace them. More Australian-owned productions on top of continuing foreign and service work means more total opportunity for cast, crew and screen professionals; more work for the industry-adjacent businesses that supply every shoot — transport, catering, accommodation, equipment hire, hardware, post-houses; and more local economic stimulus in the towns and cities where productions film. Every extra production is extra activity in a real place, for real people and real businesses — on top of everything Australia already attracts.
More productions build the workforce of tomorrow, not only the jobs of today. A steady pipeline of Australian-owned production creates real education and talent-development opportunities for current and future students, and the paid placements and on-set professional practice — through the fund's attachment and mentorship program — that turn training into a career. Sustained over time, it makes Australia an international leader not only in cultural exports but in screen jobs, industry capacity and the arts. And a permanent, accountable, self-replenishing fund that actually works becomes a blueprint — a proven model Australia can extend to other systemic gaps in how the arts are funded.
A fund that put most of its money into two or three prestige bets, chose them on vanity rather than audience, let the producer walk away with a publicly-funded asset and no path back to the fund, and skipped script and leadership support — that fund would be fragile and unaccountable. The NAPF is the opposite: volume-weighted, audience- and export-tested, IP-retained-with-a-recoupment-share, and development- and mentorship-supported. Every choice above exists to make the weak version impossible.
Illustrative archetypes for discussion — not real projects, forecasts, or commitments, and no box-office or viewership figure is asserted for them. Employment figures apply the NAPF's published ratios (8–12 FTE per $1M; headcount ~2.5–3.5× FTE reflecting short-term roles; indirect ~0.5× direct, per Deloitte/SAFC 2019) and are rounded. Comparable titles are named to illustrate the performance pattern of Australian work at each budget, not to predict these projects' results. A developed policy concept submitted to Revive 2.0 — not final legislation.