The Madrid regional government is hoping to harness the power of film tourism by investing €1.5m (£1.3m) in a new Woody Allen movie that will be shot in and around the Spanish capital and which will be contractually obliged to feature the word “Madrid” in its title.
Regional authorities are confident the 89-year-old film-maker’s next project could do for Madrid what Roman Holiday did for Rome tourism in the early 1950s, and what Sex and the City and Emily in Paris have more recently done to increase visitor numbers to New York and the French capital.
Allen’s last two films have been made with financial backing from European sources: Rifkin’s Festival, which was shot in the northern Spanish city of San Sebastián and released in 2020, and Coup de Chance, which was filmed in Paris and released in 2023.
The director, who recently published his debut novel, is believed to have struggled to source large-scale financing for his films amid the resurfacing in 2014 of an accusation that he sexually abused his daughter Dylan Farrow in 1992.
The claim, which Allen has consistently denied, was originally made in the midst of a custody battle between Allen and Mia Farrow over Dylan and her brother, Ronan, was the subject of two investigations, which resulted in no charges being brought.
The Madrid regional government evidently believes that buying into the director’s name and legacy will pay considerable dividends. “Woody Allen is one of the most multifaceted contemporary artists in the cinematic landscape, and has shaped one of the most original and highly regarded styles in film-making,” the government said in a document published online this week.
Rebecca Hall, Patricia Clarkson and Scarlett Johansson in Vicky Cristina Barcelona which also received €1.5m in funding from Barcelona city council and the Catalan regional government. Photograph: Allstar
“An audiovisual project with the characteristics of Woody Allen’s works, a director and producer of international renown and prestige, whose feature films are shown on screens worldwide (cinema and streaming platforms), offers excellent potential for impact and constitutes an ideal channel for promoting the Community of Madrid as a tourist destination.”
It noted that some of Allen’s previous works, “with similar characteristics to [this] project”, had achieved box office figures of more than $150m (£114.5m).
Details of the contract, which have also been posted online, show that the €1.5m stake will be paid in three instalments between this year and 2027, and also reveal a clause stipulating that “the final title of the film must include the word Madrid”.
The contract goes on to require that some of the payments will be contingent on the film premiering at “the Berlin film festival or a festival of similar international prestige”. It also says the project “will have to reflect the Madrid region in an easily recognisable way, with a small amount of the running time allowing for the visualisation of identifiable and recognisable spaces and locations”. The forthcoming film is referred to throughout as Wasp 2026, an acronym for Woody Allen Summer Project 2026.
The deal is not unprecedented: Barcelona city council and the Catalan regional government invested a total of €1.5m in Allen’s 2008 film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which starred Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall.
“The filming represents a wonderful advertising campaign,” a spokesperson for the regional government said at the time. “It’s an excellent advert; since news broke that the film would be made in Barcelona, it’s been in newspapers all around the world.”
The Madrid region, which is run by the rightwing, populist president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, may not have the cinematic cachet of Paris, London or New York, but it has long been immortalised in the films of Pedro Almodóvar, who moved to the Spanish capital in the late 1960s.
Last year the city held an exhibition celebrating its central place in Almodóvar’s work, titled, Madrid, Almodóvar Girl. “I grew up, I had fun, I suffered, I got fat and I flourished in Madrid,” the director has said. “And I was doing a lot of those things at the same time the city was.”
