Wolf Hall director says Mark Rylance took ‘significant’ pay cut after streamers rejected series

Wolf Hall director says Mark Rylance took ‘significant’ pay cut after streamers rejected series
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Wolf Hall director says Mark Rylance took ‘significant’ pay cut after streamers rejected series
Author: Maira Butt
Published: Jan, 24 2025 15:35

Show was rejected by streamers as director outlined importance of British stories. Wolf Hall star Mark Rylance took a “significant” pay cut for series two after the BBC drama was rejected by the big streamers. Peter Kosminsky, the series’ director, gave evidence to Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee this week as he revealed how sacrifices had been made to give viewers a second run of the popular show, which aired in December.

 [Rylance plays Thomas Cromwell]
Image Credit: The Independent [Rylance plays Thomas Cromwell]

It comes amid years of cuts and clawbacks across the British TV industry as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Apple TV+ enjoy record success. In the written submission Kosminsky revealed that production had begun on the Golden Globe-winning series only after “the producer, the writer, the director and the leading actor all gave up a significant proportion of their fees”.

Rylance plays Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, a series based on the book by Hilary Mantel. “We had shepherded the series through a 10-year development process but, in the end, it was necessary for us to work for very little to get the show made,” Kosminksy wrote. He suggested that streaming service giants did not want to invest in British storytelling.

“Though there are exceptions, it is not currently part of the streamers’ general financial model to co-produce with UK PSBs. They prefer to wholly own a project.”. Kosminsky suggested a model in which the companies would offer five per cent of their cultural revenue, which would be transferred to a cultural fund for British content. He pointed to similar schemes that are currently in place in France and Germany.

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