The Wilmington Regional Film Commission in North Carolina has reported a drop in filming inquiries in the final months of the state’s 25% tax credit. Iron Man 3 filmed in Wilmington but the state will struggle to attract similar shoots when its incentive is downgraded from next year.
Global exports of UK television productions to China rose by a staggering 40% in 2013/14, but the US remains the single biggest international market for UK shows. The figures, published by the independent producers’ trade association Pact, show that overall TV exports rose by 5% in 2013/14.
Popular drama series Under the Dome will remain in North Carolina for its third season, despite an imminent downgrade in the state's filming incentive. Based on a story by Stephen King, the show follows a town's struggles when a giant dome mysteriously seals it off from the outside world.
Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy has collected USD 120 million in filming incentive payments from the New Zealand government over the course of a four-year production process. Trilogy closer The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies will be released in cinemas in December.
Actor and filmmaker Kenneth Branagh will film a fourth and final series of English-language Wallander stories for the BBC on location in Sweden, Denmark and South Africa. The BBC’s series is based on the original Swedish novels and TV series.
A movie adaptation of the Home Guard comedy Dad’s Army will film on location in Yorkshire, north-east England. The region will stand in for the fictional seaside town Walmington-on-Sea, protected by an inept Home Guard division in World War II.
Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks are filming a Cold War thriller in New York and in Berlin from Studio Babelsberg. Currently untitled, the film tells the true story of a US attorney asked by the CIA to negotiate the release of a U-2 spy plane pilot captured by the Russians during the Cold War.
China is planning to launch an annual film grant programme worth about USD 163 million for movies that shoot at the Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis. Plans for the USD 8.2 billion studio on China’s east coast were announced by the Wanda Group last year.