Australia has lost out on the Wachowski siblings' new feature partly due to its less competitive filming incentives. Andy and Lana Wachowski, responsible for the Matrix trilogy and Cloud Atlas, will be filming their new sci-fi film Jupiter Ascending in the UK.
Filming industry professionals are lobbying for the return of Arizona’s filming incentives. Its programme expired in 2010 and it hasn’t yet had the support to return. Many in the state see the incentive as a subsidy that panders needlessly to wealthy producers.
A new report suggests New York is the big winner in the US as a result of the filming incentive changes in recent years. Los Angeles has lost more than 16,000 film industry jobs and its national job-share has fallen by nearly 10% since 2004.
Greater Fort Lauderdale, just north of Miami in Florida, has launched a new local filming incentive shortly after being visited by Marvel for Iron Man 3. The city will offer a cash rebate of up to USD150,000 per project for qualifying film and TV productions.
On Screen Manitoba has defended the role of its filming incentive. Nearly CAD15 million was paid out to production companies in 2011/12 by the Canadian province famous for its polar bears and one organisation argues the programme should be looked at more carefully.
Filming professionals in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan have called for a renewed filming incentive following a report highlighting its benefits. The province’s Chamber of Commerce found that the incentive more than justified its cost through local services spending.
Mexico has lowered its spending threshold for its commercial filming incentive. Up until a few weeks ago commercial producers had to spend 70 million pesos (USD5.3 million) to qualify for the rebate, but this has now been reduced to 40 million pesos (USD3 million).
José Padilha’s big-budget remake of sci-fi classic RoboCop will be getting an incentive payment for filming partly on location in Detroit. Like the original 1987 movie the film is set in a future Detroit, although this time most of the shoot actually took place in Ontario.