Development Fund

The BFI Development Fund awards money from the National Lottery to support formal development of original live action, emerging media and animation feature filmmaking from treatments to production-ready screenplays from storytellers demonstrating a bold vision and creative excellence. We believe that, in order to have a healthy, resilient and world-class film industry, we need to invest in, develop and promote the best talent we have in the UK.

The BFI’s Development Fund is intended for projects that are unlikely to be commercially financed at an early stage and would therefore benefit from National Lottery support. We aim to award funding to distinctive fiction projects across a range of genres, approaches and perspectives, which reflect and represent a wide range of voices and backgrounds. The BFI Development Fund can support the formal development of projects – from treatments to production-ready screenplays – from teams across the UK who can demonstrate previous experience in writing, directing and producing. We aim to help these filmmakers develop compelling and viable projects to a point where they are ready to seek production funding from the BFI or other sources.

We prioritise work that: *is made by filmmakers in the early stages of their careers *has cultural relevance or progressive ideas *takes risks in form and content *recognises the quality of differences in perspective, talent and recruitment *originated by filmmakers outside London and South East England

Applications are accepted all year round. We aim to let applicants know the outcome of their application within 8 weeks.

Development Awards are recoupable by the BFI but recouped sums of up to £100,000 per development project may be ‘recycled’ and held in a Locked Box for the producer to draw down against its future filmmaking activities including development of new film projects subject to the terms of the Locked Box initiative. We will allow you to hold a reserve of up to £20,000 in a Locked Box, but expect you to allocate any Locked Box funds over £20,000 to your new development project – ahead of additional funding from the BFI – unless you can tell us in your application how and why these funds have been allocated elsewhere.

In your application you will be asked to give us an indication of your development budget. You can request the full amount of costs needed at your current stage of development, but please note we are usually only able to support one or two stages initially (i.e. a draft and a set of revisions, or late stage costs). Our funding is only a contribution towards the costs of developing your project.

The BFI Development Fund is intended for live action and animated fictional projects including work in immersive media. Applications must be made by the lead producer who is a different person to the writer and, if there is one, director.

We are unable to provide development funding to teams without a producer. Projects without a producer should consider BFI NETWORK’s Early Development Fund.