Wednesday, 28 October 2026, 15:07
The expansion comes as a proposed federal <a href="https://cinemamix360.com/2026/10/28/how-ai-assistants-are-speeding-up-post-production/” title=”How AI assistants are speeding up post production”>production tax credit advances through Congress, potentially adding to state-level incentives.
Head Gear Films is opening a U.S. operation, with co-founder and CEO Phil Hunt telling Deadline the new unit plans to invest $120 million in U.S. independent film and television in its first year.
Samantha Allwinton, previously COO of Head Gear Films in London, will lead the unit as director of operations. She will be based in Denver and split her time between there and Los Angeles. Before joining Head Gear, she worked at Ingenious Media.
Head Gear finances independent film, television and games projects through government incentives, presales, gap and bridge funding. It also provides executive production and packaging services. Recent films it has helped finance include The Apprentice, Talk to Me and How to Have Sex.
The U.S. office is opening as a proposed federal tax credit, part of the Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act, moves through Congress. The credit would be available alongside new and existing state-level incentives.
Hunt said he wants the company to be established in the market as the proposed industry-support measures take effect, which he expects by year-end.
Over 50% of our deal flow is American movies, so we’ve already laid that down. The reason to go to LA is to increase that flow because the federal tax credit’s coming in, which is nice timing. It’s about having more of a foothold in the U.S. and being on their time zone.
U.S. producers will have half their budget covered and still need the rest. We’ve closed that gap on close to 600 films. We want to be there before the rush.
Head Gear will use existing reg
When we look at where the company is at right now, and all the other companies that we’re horizontally integrated into, they’re growing. We have got money that we can deploy,
Hunt said the Head Gear team regularly visits the U.S. and that establishing a permanent base there has been a long-standing goal.
I’ve been meaning to open up in the States for a very long time. I’ve never found the right person until now, who’s got exactly what Head Gear needs and understands Head Gear’s character and ethos, which is quite different from that of most people.
Head Gear US plans to attend AFM in November and Sundance in January.
I’ve spent years running Head Gear from the inside. I know how we choose films and why we say no to most of them.
Now I get to sit across the table from U.S. producers and tell them straight what their film is worth and how we’d get it made. American independents are about to get a lot of new money. We’re here to help them turn it into films people buy.
Hunt co-founded Head Gear in 2002 with Compton Ross, who has also been a CEO in the international oil and gas industry for 48 years.
Alongside the U.S. launch, Hunt outlined plans to expand Head Gear’s role in production.
We’ve been silently kind of working on the production side of Head Gear, and the next phase for us as a business is going back into production and really kind of being the producer’s producer. So, working for the producer in the background; they’ve developed projects, and then we help package them up, do the business affairs, get them off the ground, run finance plans, and then years down the line, we’re still helping collect the money.
Hunt said Head Gear helps fund about 30 films a year and serves as hands-on executive producer on about a third of them.
Coming from a ‘failed’ producer background, I’m really fascinated with helping producers and guiding them through the marketplace better than ever using our data.
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