North Carolina's General Assembly cut the financial incentives for production crews that film in the state. North Carolina has had incentives in place since the 1980s and in 2010, increased its reimbursements for film crews to 25 percent of all their expenses. As a result, the state had one of the largest incentive packages for film crews in the country. by Michael Papich
Since the raise in 2010, North Carolina has been the backdrop to movies such as The Hunger Games and Iron Man 3, and television shows such as Homeland and Under the Dome.
There've been 800 productions in the last 30 years, and to think that's all going to go away in one sweep of the political pen is daunting for future filmmakers and for the state as a whole, said Paul Castro, assistant professor of communications at Elon and a former professional screenwriter.
With North Carolina's new budget, $10 million is set aside for incentives, with a $5 million cap per production. Elon professors with a background in the film industry like Castro and Doug Kass, an instructor in communications, said the cuts will drastically affectthe state's production.
Hollywood is filled with businesspeople, and they're going to go where business is best. If they can get a better tax break in Louisiana or New York or Connecticut or California or New Mexico or any of the other states with better breaks, they're going to go there, Kass said.
While states like Wisconsin have cut film incentives in recent years, others such as New York and Louisiana have made sure to increase or at least keep them at normal levels. California is even considering quadrupling its film incentives.
With so many states after film productions, Kass said North Carolina will lose out if all the state has to offer is its visuals.
If you look at Homeland, you wouldn't look at that and say Oh, that's definitely North Carolina,' he said. Other shows will have a similar issue. There's few landscapes in North Carolina you couldn't find elsewhere, and there's lot of states with better tax breaks.
The producers of Homeland have already announced that new seasons will be filmed in South Africa instead of Charlotte. Under the Dome has been shot in Wilmington, and producers have not said whether future seasons will continue to be shot in North Carolina.
Legislators in the General Assembly who pushed to get rid of the incentives, like House Majority Whip Mike Hager, said the incentives were giving away too much state money that could be better spent in other parts of the state. Kass said the way a production's financial impact in a state is calculated is not accurate.
They can count the number of hotel rooms, they can tally up the number of restaurant bills and gasoline bought for the time that production is in town, he said. But they don't look at the possible long-term benefits of having films or TV shows shot in a town. How many tourists come to see those places over a period of time? There's no mechanism to count that.
A study at North Carolina State University on the impact the incentives had on the state, commissioned by state film commissions, showed that in 2012, the incentives led to the creation of more than 4,000 jobs and had a net contribution to the state of more than $25 million.
When the Hunger Games came to North Carolina, it created 300 carpenter jobs alone, and they were all local to North Carolina, Castro said.
He also pointed out that there are now many film production companies all over the state that will be affected by the cut and will have to redefine, relocate or shut down.
If productions are not coming to North Carolina, and there are companies that support those productions exclusively, then obviously they are going to have to leave, and a lot of people are going to lose their jobs, he said.
If incentives come back, Castro said it may not suddenly bring back production. As he put it, crews and companies have families and other concerns to keep in mind. Moving back across the country is not as simple as flipping a switch, and companies may wait to see if the incentives in North Carolina will be stable.
Kass had a somewhat different view.
Basically, Hollywood is business and they're going to go to wherever they can make the most money, he said. If the [incentives] come back, production will come back.
http://www.elonpendulum.com
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
North Carolina's General Assembly cut the financial incentives for production crews that film in the state. North Carolina has had incentives in place since the 1980s and in 2010, increased its reimbursements for film crews to 25 percent of all their expenses. As a result, the state had one of the largest incentive packages for film crews in the country. by Michael Papich
