Will Incentives Bring Moviemakers Back?

 
The City of Savannah did $21 million in movie business in 1998. In 2001, no feature films came to town marking the end of a decade of moviemaking here. Now there is hope of a renaissance as the state of Georgia offers free money to entice Hollywood back to town.
 
If you make a big movie across the Talmadge Bridge in South Carolina, the state will actually cut you a check for 20% to 30% of what you spend there. In other words, they pay you to make a movie in their state.
 
Georgia on the other hand, will give you 9% to 12% of what you spend in the form of tax credits. Not only is it lower, the tax credits are useless to the moviemakers, they have to sell them to another company to get any money out of it at all.
 
That is why the golden age of big budget films in Savannah ended with the 1990’s. South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi and other southern states got serious about attracting movies. They were willing to lose state money just to bring the jobs and exposure you can get from a major motion picture.
 
This week the state of Georgia more than doubled their incentives. Soon if you do a production here, commercial, music videos, video games etc., for more than $500 thousand, you get 20% of your budget in tax credits. If you are willing to attach a state-approved Georgia promotional logo to the product, you get an additional 10%.
 
Since direct rebates, like those in South Carolina, are worth about 35% more dollar for dollar than tax credits this week's move doesn’t put Georgia at the top of the heap but according to Jay Self of the Savannah Film Office, the new incentives do put us back in the game.

Self says filmmakers are already showing interest. “None of the big Hollywood movies yet but we started to get calls as soon as the incentives passed, boom!” he says, hitting the table with his hand. “You know, we knew the minute the incentive was passed we would be on the radar.”
 
Watch the video for more on Savannah’s movie industry and more of our interview with Jay Self.