Politicians in New Mexico are calling for the annual spending cap to be dropped from the state’s filming incentive. Democrats want the state to be able to pay out more than the existing maximum of USD50 million a year, to help secure more big-budget films on the scale of The Lone Ranger.
New England Studios has urged the Governor of Massachusetts to resist introducing a cap on the annual state filming incentive. The company plans to open a new studio in Devens in a matter of months to help attract more productions like Oscar-winning movie The Fighter.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to extend state filming incentives through to 2019. The programme costs USD420 million a year but makes the state more competitive than California and has firmed New York’s position as one of America’s production hubs.
The future of New Zealand’s location filming incentives is likely to be announced within months. A review has been underway for some time and the size of subsidies paid to Peter Jackson’s Hobbit films has ignited a political row.
Officials in North Carolina – home of the first Hunger Games film – have called for the state’s location filming incentive to be made permanent. The existing 25% rebate is set to expire at the start of 2015, but Charlotte City Council wants to remove this ‘sunset’ date.
Mauritius will officially launch a location filming incentive at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2013. Positioned east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, the island is offering a rebate of up to 30% on eligible production spending.
Production professionals across British Columbia in Canada have called on the provincial government to increase support for their industry. Audiovisual work is increasingly shifting east, attracted by more generous filming incentives in Quebec and Ontario.
Czech Republic’s location filming fund has been boosted despite an earlier presidential veto. President Vaclav Klaus vetoed plans to expand the filming incentive as he disagreed with the notion of the film industry getting state funding, but the Czech Parliament overruled him.