Game of Thrones<\/a>.\u201d Since then, Irish VFX studios have worked on productions including \u201cSh\u014dgun,\u201d \u201cThe Penguin\u201d and numerous major studio projects.<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re getting a massive amount of interest now, because obviously the number is good,\u201d says Walshe. He notes that the credit also permits productions to stack post-production spend on top of VFX at the same rate, which opens a compelling proposition for international producers looking to consolidate their post pipeline. \u201cA lot of people are very interested in adding post into it as well,\u201d he says. \u201cIf they were to place $1 million in visual effects, they could effectively add on the post-production as well at 40%. It really opens a really interesting door for a lot of producers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tCapacity, however, remains the principal question \u2014 one Walshe says the industry is actively working to answer. To address this, Screen Ireland has established five National Talent Academies covering live action, animation and VFX, each with industry representation on its steering committees, and including geographically dispersed crew hubs across the country. The agency logged more than 6,500 skills placements across the sector in 2025 alone, and over 18,000 since 2021.<\/p>\n
\n\tFinnegan points to 2019 as a structural inflection point, when Ireland became one of the first countries in Europe to link its tax incentive directly to skills development. \u201cThat\u2019s really enabled us to assess where there may be skills gaps and respond accordingly, and to have a structural approach to skills development.\u201d She adds that the academies are designed with inclusion as an explicit goal, with a focus on geographic spread and underrepresented communities. It is also, she says, where Ireland is \u201cseeing a new era of creative confidence\u201d \u2014 one that extends across film, theater, literature and music. \u201cIt speaks to the fusion and exchange happening across the arts in Ireland at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFor Lee Cronin, the Irish director behind \u201cEvil Dead Rise\u201d \u2014 which grossed $150 million globally for Warner Bros. \u2014 Ireland\u2019s evolution as a production base is something he experiences day-to-day. Based in Ireland and operating through his production company Wicked\/Good, Cronin recently picture-locked \u201cLee Cronin\u2019s The Mummy\u201d at a Dublin City Center facility before heading straight across to a color suite. The film opens this spring via Warner Bros. Despite a narrative set partly in New Mexico and Egypt, Cronin built a studio in Ireland and has posted all of his features largely in-country. He cites Peter Jackson\u2019s development of a genre production infrastructure in New Zealand as an aspirational model.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe kind of have almost everything we need on the island,\u201d says Cronin. His one identified gap: a shortage of Dolby Atmos mixing stages. \u201cIf we can get one or two of those running, we have all of the necessary capability. That\u2019s something I\u2019d be a real proponent of trying to see happen.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tHe also points to the enhanced VFX tax credit as tangible evidence of progress, noting the presence of \u201csome really robust visual effects companies\u201d that genre productions depend on. Looking further ahead, Cronin describes ambitions for Wicked\/Good to become an identifiable force in genre cinema, citing Jackson\u2019s WingNut Films and the Weta ecosystem as a benchmark.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe broader challenge for the industry is one of balance \u2014 ensuring that a booming market in international inbound production does not crowd out the indigenous storytelling that has defined Ireland\u2019s global reputation. Rebecca O\u2019Flanagan, managing director of Treasure Entertainment, whose work focuses on Irish stories and filmmakers, describes this as an ongoing but so far well-managed tension.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThere is a co-dependency on both sides of the industry,\u201d she says. \u201cYou have some huge international productions that come in \u2014 that can put a strain on the indigenous industry in terms of crews and studios. So we\u2019re all very conscious of that.\u201d She points to Screen Ireland as an organization that monitors what she calls \u201cthat very delicate ecosystem,\u201d adding that, so far, the two sides have proven mutually beneficial.<\/p>\n
\n\tNorton agrees that the balance is currently holding. \u201cThe worry that you ever have is that the larger scale projects will eclipse the ability to keep those smaller projects being made. But at the moment, I think that balance is there.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tShe notes that crews can move fluidly between the largest international productions \u2014 she cites series \u201dWednesday,\u201d which filmed in Ireland \u2014 and smaller domestic projects, keeping the workforce employed and artistically engaged. The challenge on the TV side, she adds, is that domestic shows still require international partnerships to reach a viable budget. \u201cWe still can\u2019t fund Irish shows solely out of Ireland,\u201d says Norton. \u201cYou still need those partnerships to finance those shows at a manageable level.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tScreen Ireland\u2019s 2026 slate of 87 projects \u2014 22 feature films, 17 documentaries and 13 TV dramas or animated series \u2014 reflects the breadth of the agency\u2019s investment. Its remit has expanded beyond film into TV drama and digital games, and it has also launched \u201cWhere to Watch Ireland,\u201d a platform designed to bring Irish film and television to U.S. and international audiences. Screen Ireland\u2019s Los Angeles office, opened in 2019 alongside the Irish consulate, serves as a base for creative co-production development with U.S. studios and streamers.<\/p>\n
\n\tNo conversation about the Irish screen industry\u2019s future escapes the question of AI. For Walshe, it is less a threat than an accelerant. \u201cFrom an AI perspective, we\u2019re quite excited about it, to be honest,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s been in our workflows for quite some time \u2014 it\u2019s embedded in the software that\u2019s been updated all the time.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tHe acknowledges that artists are \u201cskeptical and apprehensive,\u201d but draws on three decades in the business to contextualize the anxiety. \u201cWe\u2019ve had massive software changes. That\u2019s always the way \u2014 we\u2019re skeptical of things until they come along, and then we see there\u2019s really good value in this.\u201d <\/p>\n
\n\tO\u2019Flanagan is measured but optimistic. \u201cWhile we stand on a kind of momentous threshold when we\u2019re looking at things like AI,\u201d she says, \u201cI think we always take hope and optimism from the fact that those unique voices and storytellers are always going to be something that the industry values.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe audiovisual industry in Ireland is now valued at over \u20ac1 billion ($1.16 billion) in gross value added, supporting more than 15,800 full-time equivalent jobs. For Finnegan, the figures are meaningful only insofar as they reflect the health of the talent ecosystem they are built on.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re a creative business, and the human experience is at the heart of creating work that connects with audiences,\u201d she says. \u201cWhatever the disruption might be \u2014 being that human experience, the artist being at the core of everything that we do \u2014 that is something that will just remain central to everything that we do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At some point, the green wave stops being a wave and starts being the waterline. Ireland doesn\u2019t need…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[18,117,1440,19,17,24510,175247,100768],"class_list":{"0":"post-381773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-game-of-thrones","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-jessie-buckley","14":"tag-screen-ireland","15":"tag-shogun"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116217608014652590","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}