Canary Islands as the fresh have-it-all audiovisual production location

Audiovisual production location

Canary Islands as the fresh have-it-all audiovisual production location

If you’re a producer in the audiovisual sector, you’re already well aware that there’s a place in Europe that is steadily growing in terms of films made on its astonishing locations: the Canary Islands.

From Hand Solo of the Star Wars universe to the latest instalment of Rambo, many big international productions have chosen the archipelago to shoot: Wonder Woman, Fast & Furious, Allied or Jason Bourne are only a few examples.

Why are big studios selecting the Canary Islands to make their movies?

There are a lot of reasons in the cinematic side of it: thousands of strikingly beautiful locations that are very different, but very close from one another, the best weather in the world that allows filming to take place virtually any day of the year, lots of great hotels to lodge the crew and full application of the European Union law framework.

Booming support local ecosystem

What’s more, the Canary Islands have a booming support ecosystem comprised of animation studios and visual effects companies, like El Ranchito, creators of the visual effects for the award-winning HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones, production services companies and even a supercomputer to render whatever your production needs. But there’s more.

In the business side of it, it’s not easy to compete with the Canary Islands in terms of incentives for productions taking place there: 50% tax rebate for foreign productions that spend 1+ million euros in the islands and have a minimum production budget of 2 million.

If we add a corporate income tax rate of 4% (the lowest in Europe) for companies set up in the Canary Islands to carry the production in the islands are truly top-notch money savers for your production.

All this boils down to producers from all over the world selecting the Canary Islands to shoot important parts of their films and setting film production companies there more than in any other location in Spain, as a 12.6% growth last year versus 3.7% in the rest of Spain is proof.