A new report from FilmLA has revealed the scale of the filming decline in Los Angeles in recent years. Production increased through the course of 2013 but filming was still dramatically below the city’s historic peaks, with feature film location work declining by 50% since 1996.
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.
Los Angeles’ new ‘film czar’ has said that a plan to boost filming in California will be prepared before May this year. Tom Sherak is a former movie studio boss and has been appointed by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti to tackle the city’s runaway production problem.
Hit Los Angeles-based comedy show Modern Family is to film a holiday episode on location in Australia. Twentieth Century Fox Television has made an agreement with airline Qantas to fly the cast out for two weeks of location filming that could help boost local film tourism.
Nevada in the western US has launched a new filming incentive designed to boost the state’s production industry. The new programme is worth up to 19% of local production spending and has an annual film fund of USD20 million.
New TV series Tyrant will film on location in Tel Aviv and comes from the producers of terrorism drama Homeland. The series will focus on the son of a Middle-Eastern dictator who becomes embroiled in regional politics when he returns home with his US family after years in exile.
An extensive film tourism campaign is promoting the New Zealand filming locations used in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The movie is the second in Peter Jackson’s epic fantasy trilogy following hobbit Bilbo Baggins and a band of dwarves as they encounters the dragon Smaug.
A new business plan is helping bring more commercial filming to Washington State in the north-west US. The Commercial Business Development Plan (CBDP) was created through a partnership with Washington Filmworks and the Seattle Office of Film + Music.