North Carolina’s newly adopted budget that went into effect on July 1 includes $33.6 million in funding available to television and film productions through the state’s Film Incentive Grant.
The best part is that starting on July 1, 2018, the grant will have $31 million in yearly recurring funding, a big step toward rebuilding North Carolina’s film industry.
EUE/Screen Gems Studios Executive Vice President Bill Vassar, has commented, “This is really hopeful. As this has been developing with the legislators and word has gotten out that something was going to change, that there would be positive changes in the incentive, we’ve had an increase of interest of people coming here to shoot,” as reported by The Wilmywood Daily.
Wilmington Regional Film Commission Director Johnny Griffin tells WECT, “It gives us some stability to look into the future where projects may have been interested in us before, but didn’t know how long they could stay. Whether or not the incentive would still be here, and provided some uncertainty for them. Hopefully, now we’ll be able to let them look long term and know things will be steady for them in North Carolina.”
The grant program allows the state to return 25 percent of local production costs, but the recurring nature should help draw interest back to the state.
Griffin added that the next step is to go to Los Angeles to start reconnecting with potential clients. “It’s time for us to go back and rekindle those relationships, explain it to folks, get them to look at us again and hopefully put us under consideration for future projects,” he said.
While the amount available through the grant itself has not changed, the fact that it is now budgeted to be recurring annually, the state can now offer a much better assurance of stability to future productions that may be considering filming a series in North Carolina.
Season 2 of TNT’s Good Behavior is currently filming in Wilmington, and hopefully now we can look for more productions on the way in near future.
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