First Swiss films and series benefit from “Lex Netflix”
Keystone-SDA
Generated with artificial intelligence.
The revised Film Act obliges companies with TV and on-demand services to invest a portion of their revenue into Swiss filmmaking. Figures for 2024 show, they will have to spend CHF30.1 million (about $37 million) on local productions.
This content was published on
The revised Film Act, also known as “Lex Netflix”, obliges companies with TV and on-demand services to spend 4% of their revenue on domestic filmmaking. Foreign streaming services such as Netflix, Disney or Amazon, as well as German or French TV channels with Swiss advertising slots, are affected. The law has been in force since January 1, 2024.
According to a document published by the Federal Office of Culture (FOC) on Saturday, this investment obligation affects 21 companies. These include international streaming platforms, global tech companies as well as Swiss telecoms providers, private broadcasters and on-demand services.
In 2024, these companies generated a total turnover of CHF752 million. This results in an investment obligation of CHF30.1 million. According to the document, CHF15.9 million of this has already been effectively invested. This leaves a “deferred” CHF14.2 million that they still have to invest by 2027.
Visible effects
The projects that benefited from the investments include Landesverräter, seasons three and four of Tschugger and the series Winter Palace.
It is still too early to assess the impact of the investment obligation on the Swiss film industry, wrote FOC Director Carine Bachmann when asked by the Keystone-SDA news agency. According to her, the effects are already visible, even though the measure has only just been introduced.
More
More
Swiss voters decide to impose levy on streaming giants
This content was published on
Supporters of a mandatory investment by online entertainment platforms into the Swiss film industry are heading for victory in Sunday’s referendum.
Of the “effective investments”, CHF9.3 million have been invested in the acquisition and production of films, CHF4.9 million have been invested by television stations in their promotion, CHF1.3 million have gone to film festivals “to strengthen film culture”. Finally, CHf400,000 were spent on copyrights.
As far as the format is concerned, the slightly larger part of the CHF9.3 million francs was invested in films, namely CHF5 million francs and CHF4.2 million was spent on series.
Adapted from German by DeepL/ac
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch.
More
US tariffs: Pharma firms not planning job cuts in Switzerland
This content was published on
The additional investments in the US will not lead to a reduction in jobs in Switzerland. This is according to pharmaceutical giant Roche, which expects the number of employees to remain stable in the current year. The position of Novartis is similar.
Swiss government working with firms to overcome high US tariffs
This content was published on
The Swiss delegation that travelled to Washington has returned from talks on tariffs in the United States. The negotiations are now being conducted under the aegis of the government and the federal administration, according to Seco.
WTO improves its world trade forecast thanks to Trump’s tariffs
This content was published on
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) expects world trade to grow by 0.9% this year, better than expected in April. US imports surged in the first quarter as a result of Donald Trump’s tariff announcements.
Swiss gold exports might not face US tariffs after all
This content was published on
Gold exports to the United States may not be taxed after all. The White House plans to “issue an executive order in the near future to clarify misinformation regarding the taxation of gold bullion,” among other things.
