New Fox TV drama Gotham will explore the early career of James Gordon, the detective who eventually helps Batman with his fight against Gotham City’s super-villains. Filming locations for the series will need to offer tax incentives and film-friendly production infrastructure.
Filmmaker Spike Jonze combined cityscapes in Los Angeles and Shanghai to create the near-future urban setting of his oddball romance Her. The film follows a lonely writer who develops a strange relationship with an artificially intelligent operating system.
Advocacy group the North Carolina Production Alliance (NCPA) has formed to promote the state’s filming incentive. A generous 25% filming tax credit is set to expire at the end of 2014 and the production industry is lobbying for a renewal to attract more shoots like Stephen King’s Under the Dome.
Marvel will shoot second-unit footage on location in Johannesburg in South Africa for its upcoming superhero sequel The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Filming will last two weeks for the movie that will bring together Marvel’s biggest superhero stars for a second adventure.
Shoots for international shows like Elementary accounted for most of the TV spending in the UK in 2013 as a result of the new TV tax credit, according to the British Film Institute. Just over GBP230 million was spent by TV productions and nearly 65% of this came from international shoots.
The California Film Commission has launched a new locations directory offering reports and features on filming in the state. LOCATION CALIFORNIA is available as both a digital and hard copy publication and will help promote the state’s production industry.
Mark Wahlberg’s true-life Special Forces drama Lone Survivor chased a competitive filming incentive programme to double the mountains of New Mexico for Afghanistan. The film tells the story of a failed 2005 mission where Navy SEALs set out to capture a Taliban commander.
A series of major TV dramas – including the Stephen King miniseries Under the Dome – filmed in North Carolina in 2013 and helped deliver production spending of USD254 million. This could bolster calls to renew the state’s 25% filming incentive, which is set to expire at the end of 2014.