A studio executive at Warner Bros has advocated a larger fund for the filming incentive programme in Texas. Michael Walbrecht is Entertainment Vice President at the studio and said making more money available would help boost the state’s profile in the US and attract larger shoots.
California will launch a reformed filming incentive programme with an annual fund of USD 330 million that will come into effect for the 2016 fiscal year. The fund will still be less than in New York, but the hope is that California’s locations and production infrastructure will give the West Coast the edge.
Four separate film companies in Thailand have come together to form a new studio that aims to boost the country’s production industry and expand its influence in China. Transformation Film has USD5.5 million in registered capital and plans to release up to six movies a year.
North Carolina has downgraded its filming incentive from a tax credit to an annual grant in a development that will make it less appealing to shoots like Under the Dome and Sleepy Hollow. The move comes after months of production lobbying to keep the state’s generous filming tax credit.
Upcoming TV miniseries ANZAC Girls has filmed entirely on location in and around Adelaide in South Australia for a story set during the Gallipoli campaign of World War I. The drama focuses on the New Zealand and Australian nurses who served at Gallipoli and elsewhere on the Western Front.
New BBC America TV drama Intruders shot on location in Vancouver, British Columbia, using the province’s filming incentives to double the city for Seattle. The series follows a secretive society that seeks refuge in the bodies of others as a way of pursuing immortality.
Clive Owen and filmmaker Steven Soderbergh recreated New York as it looked at the turn of the 20th Century for period medical drama The Knick. Set in 1900, the ten-part miniseries tells the story of the medical staff at Brooklyn’s Knickerbocker Hospital, led by Owen’s Dr John Thackery.
A new film studio has been proposed for development in Straiton outside Edinburgh in Scotland. The GBP 40 million Pentland Studios would span nearly 30 acres and could help Scotland attract more productions on the scale of TV miniseries Outlander.