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Thursday, 26 August 2021

Cairo walks back plan to hike permits to film on city streets

Cairo officials are walking back their decision to hike fees for movie, TV and advertising producers who want to film on city streets just days after ordering additional fees of up to EGP 100k per day. The move (which isn’t necessarily bad policy) predictably earned backlash from media industry stakeholders who have rather large megaphones at their disposal.

The governorate will, instead, enact a new set of regulations to regulate how it charges producers for filming permits and will probably see a sliding scale of fees based on intent: One price for TV commercials, another for still-ads or cinema / TV productions. The decision had previously imposed a fee of as much as EGP 15k per hour — and EGP 100k a day — for filming on a Cairo street.

The decision had attracted the ire of industry members: The new fees would have strapped producers who are already kicking taxes and other fees into government coffers, producer Magdy El Hawary said on Tuesday, while Actors Syndicate head Ashraf Zaki told Extra News (watch, runtime: 4:13) yesterday that the fees should be proportional to the spend of each production. The Egyptian Cinema Industry Chamber held an emergency meeting yesterday to discuss the new decision and its impact on the industry, Akhbar El Yom reported.

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