Georgia is now tied with Louisiana for No. 3 in worldwide film production, according to FilmL.A, the not-for-profit film office that serves the Greater Los Angeles region.
The Peach State’s star is definitely rising. In 2013, Georgia ranked No. 5 behind Louisiana, Canada, California and the United Kingdom
“It’s a testimony that we’re doing something right,” said Lee Thomas, deputy commissioner of the Georgia Film, Music and Digital Entertainment Office. “We’ve got a lot to offer and we’re getting a lot of those projects .”
In 2015, FilmL.A. analyzed a sample of 109 feature films, and 12 of these were filmed in Georgia. California came out on top with 19 productions, followed by the U.K. (15 productions), Georgia and Louisiana (12 productions) and Canada (11 productions).
“One thing that’s great about what it shows about Georgia is the fact that we’ve got all this on-location shooting that goes through the community a lot more than an animated movie,” Thomas said. “Those are all high-paying jobs, but they don’t need trucks, lighting, the painters, all the kinds of stuff that flows throughout the economy.”
New York, which ranked No. 2 last year with 13 movies, hosted only seven projects this year.
And for the first time on record, California did not host any of the top 25 live-action films at the worldwide box office in 2015, according to the study.
In fiscal 2015, Georgia hosted 248 total film and television productions, which had a $6 billion economic impact on the state, according to the Georgia Department of Economic Development. The direct spend of these projects was $1.7 billion.
“With all these new distribution models, we’re seeing a lot of these projects pick Georgia,” Thomas said. “Jason Bateman is directing a series, ‘Ozark,’ for Netflix that will be shooting here. Will Packer will have a series here, ‘Buckhead.’ At one point, we had nine pilots here.”
Georgia revamped its tax incentives available to productions that choose to shoot here, and the industry has since skyrocketed. The film industry’s economic impact increased over 2000 percent since 2008, and Thomas expects it will keep growing.
http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/morning_call/2016/06/georgia-now-tied-for-no-3-in-worldwide-film.html
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