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Sad news from Michigan. But many, including myself, saw this one coming from the beginning. Raleigh’s Pontiac Studios, the flagship state-of-the-art $80 million studio complex is reportedly going to default on a bond payment next month and, tragically, the state’s pension funds are on the hook for over $600,000. From The Detroit News: Michigan’s...
It’s time for California to wake up. California is under attack. In the late 1990′s, Canada devised generous film incentives in the form of tax credits as a weapon to wage economic war on the U.S. in an attempt to capture one of the planet’s most valuable and prized industries: the U.S. motion picture...
It’s time for some “deleted scenes” that will not be making it into the final version of my forthcoming law review article, “Down the Rabbit Hole: The Madness of State Film Incentives as a ‘Solution’ to Runaway Production“, which will be published by the University of Pennsylvania’s Journal of Business Law later this year. ...
There is a fantastic post on the Film Works blog that has a fairly detailed breakdown of the major expenditures of a major film production that spent $20.2 million over 93 days shooting in Los Angeles in 2009. Here is a sample of the itemized expenditures: Hotel room days: 213 $66,061 Car rental days:...
A war of words between the Los Angeles Times’ Michael Hiltzik, the LAEDC and the MPAA has erupted over Hiltzik’s recent editorial attacking the LAEDC’s recent report about the California film incentive. In short, Hiltzik is of the opinion that because of the mere fact the MPAA paid for the report, that fact alone...
Below is the first half of the Film Works campaign’s analysis of the brand new LAEDC study on the economic impact of the California film incentive. It is quite thorough and is a honest appraisal of the report, which some people are attempting to spin as showing a positive return on investment for the...
I don’t want to keep being critical of the MPAA, but the organization just keeps making mistakes. They really need to change the way they sell the idea of film incentives. They need to stop making claims film incentives generate revenue for states because it’s just not true. To insist otherwise is a lie. ...
Louisiana lawmakers are arguing over whether the state can afford the annual operating costs for a proposed 424-bed $1.2 billion hospital in New Orleans, nearly a decade after the state closed Charity Hospital after Hurricane Katrina: Supporters of the proposed $1.2 billion University Medical Center defended it’s strengths for the New Orleans metro area...
There is a general consensus that producers, studios and filmmakers who take advantage of generous film incentives are not to blame for runaway production, but rather the underlying incentive. Filmmaking is a highly competitive business and the stakes are huge. Most films lose money, and one big-budget flop can sink a studio. If a...
If it sounds too good to be true…… The State of Georgia is making money from its film incentive program, according to a February 2011 report published by Vancouver-based (of all places) Meyers Norris Penny (MNP) and Santa Monica-based W2 Entertainment. They claim that although the tax credits issued from 2005-2010 cost the state...
The brief interview below made me gasp at the end, when I heard how much money this one motion picture catering business in Los Angeles spends at just one of its many vendors, who are also in California. I think this highlights the very real danger to California from runaway production. The losses and...
A total of five annual reports about the New York state film incentive program from the NY Dept. of Taxation & Finance have been added to the Report Library. In addition to these reports, I also added the January 2011 “Progress Report” from the California Film Commission as well as a 2007 report on...
The following table is from the 2009 ERA report for Louisiana, which is available in the report library. As seen in the table, less than half of the production spending went to the benefit of the state. From 2002-2007, the combined total budgets for all features filmed in Louisiana was $2.3 billion, of which...
Three recently released articles published by the Film Works L.A. campaign in California are well worth reading…. The first article, Part One: “The Clear and Present Danger” of Runaway Production to California, is the first of a two-part story about the threat of runaway production to California (and therefore the nation in the long run)...
A brand new report from the Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency (authored by economist David Zin) offers a sobering and critical assessment regarding the efficacy of the state’s massive film incentives. I just added it to the “Report Library” and you can read it HERE. First, there is no doubt that the Michigan incentives have...
Looks like there is some good news for Iowa, whose “two for one” 50% production incentive was, briefly, the most generous incentive in the US. Sadly, the gravy train was short lived because the people in charge of running the Iowa film office had no idea what they were doing (and that’s being kind…...
Bob Poole’s June 29 article in the Los Angeles Times caught my attention. Framed as an nostalgic issue of the Hollywood “landmark” being demolished in favor of development company behind movie studios in New Mexico and elswhere and, therefore, partly responsible for runaway production, the owners of the stand seem to have an emotionallly...
Below is an excellent video from Wisconsin about the debate concerning that state’s film incentive program, which was cancellled some time ago. While the video is not new, the debate offered is basicly the same one taking place in many states around the nation. On balance, I think each side makes some excellent points. ...
Almost a month ago I made a post about the MPAA’s “State by State Statistics”, which is available on their site HERE. I raised some accuracy concerns and had some questions about the source(s) of their data. During a conference call today, those concerns were fully addressed and the MPAA went out of their...
Richard Corliss of Time Magazine wrote an interesting piece on the poor box office performance so far this summer. I don’t often write about such articles, as they are not about runaway production or film incentives specifically. However, the overall economic health of the industry is important to those issues, naturally, and I am...
Variety.com – H'w'd and D.C.