“Fast and Furious”. This is the name of one of the greatest franchises of cinema in recent years, blockbuster that they cut roads through Viseu and that they repeated the dose in Almada. But it could also be the name, translated into Portuguese, given to the current moment of audiovisual in Portugal. A boom that generated investment, that put the country’s name on the shark route from transmission, which allowed the start of co-productions between Portugal and other countries and which helped give life, for example, to the first Portuguese series on Netflix, “Glória”. All this has happened – and is happening – since 2018, when the country decided to do what was already happening in other parts of Europe: create a “very competitive” incentive system (the so-called “cash rebate”) that invites anyone who wants to invest, with the guaranteed return of a percentage of the expenses by the Portuguese State.
For this reason, at the same time that Portugal began a path of co-productions (“Auga Seca”, for example) with countries such as Spain or Iceland (“Cold Haven”, still in pre-production), it also became attractive for film giants: the new “Fast and Furious” movie; the prequel to “War of Thrones”, “House of the Dragon” (HBO), landed at Monsanto, in Idanha à Nova, in 2021; “Heart of Stone” (Netflix), with Gal Gadot, set up camps in several Lisbon parishes; and the town of Rabo de Peixe will be the protagonist of a production made by Ukbar Filmes for the same platform. But will it definitely be the turn of Portuguese producers, actors and technicians to show what they are worth in the international market and catapult the country’s “industry” to a level never seen before? Of doing with the cinema and the series, what happened to tourism?
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Source: Observadora
