Blockade Runner Beach Resort general manager Nicolas Montoya described Wilmington’s economy as a quilt.
The local business community, he said, is stitched together by the major industries that generate tourism, revenue and jobs. For decades, one of those industries has been film. With the future of the state’s film industry uncertain, he and others are worried the quilt could unravel.
North Carolina’s film incentives program expired at the end of 2014 and already local film recruiters have seen a 70 percent drop in inquiries, Mayor Bill Saffo said during a press conference at EUE/Screen Gems Studios Feb. 20.
During the press conference, Mayor Saffo and other city officials announced their united support for the film grant program that replaced the film incentives this year.
While the film incentives offered up to a $20 million rebate to each production, the grant program allocates $10 million per year to be split among all productions.
Saffo said representatives from the Wilmington Regional Film Commission plan to lobby in Raleigh to procure more money for the grant program. He said that was a more realistic goal than reinstating the film incentives, given a lack of support for the program by current leadership in the General Assembly.
Even if more money could be secured for the program, some feel the application process alone would be enough to dissuade production companies.
“There’s too much ambiguity,” University of North Carolina Wilmington film studies professor Terry Linehan said during a Feb. 21 phone interview. “Will they get more money, will they not get more money? The producers can’t wait for that . . . they don’t want to apply . . . and then maybe not get [it].”
Rep. Susi Hamilton, D-New Hanover, agreed, saying she is still working in Raleigh to reinstate film incentives and was therefore caught off guard by the Feb. 20 announcement. She and other lawmakers recently filed a bill that would reinstate the film incentives, but inclement weather has prevented the bill from being heard by committee.
As the debate plays out in Raleigh and production companies look elsewhere to film, local businesses are already feeling the effects.
“I can tell you several businesses that have shut down as a result of the new grant program,” Linehan said. “A couple of casting agencies, a talent agency has moved out of town to Atlanta already.”
Businesses directly serving the film industry will feel the impacts first, but as those individuals and businesses leave town, it will create a chain reaction, Wrightsville Beach Chamber of Commerce board member Sue Bulluck said. More than 560 local businesses have now joined an online forum heralding the importance of the film industry to the survival of small businesses.
And concerns by local companies are compounded because they receive business not just directly from the film industry but from the tourists and students the industry brings.
Hundreds visit Wilmington specifically to tour the filming locations and walk in the footsteps of Hollywood stars, said Kim Hufham, president and CEO of the Wilmington and Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Linehan, who also oversees UNCW’s film studies internship program, said losing Wilmington’s identity as a film town could also diminish the nationwide draw of the program. He is still able to place interns in smaller-scale productions like wedding shoots, he said, but those opportunities don’t hold the same marketing value as interning on “One Tree Hill.”
Anecdotes aside, state lawmakers need tangible numbers, a clear cost to benefit ratio, to validate reinstating the film incentives.
“It’s part of a psyche, part of a culture,” Montoya said, “and sometimes those words don’t hold as much weight as money and revenue and taxes.”
While the benefits may not yet be tangible, the losses might be, Bulluck said. But by the time those numbers are available it could be too late.
“Once people move,” she said, “it’s mighty hard to get them back.”
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