Written by new-contact on Apr 18, 2012. Posted in Incentive News

Maryland location filming threatened with state incentive delay

Maryland’s filming industries are concerned about a delay in plans to extend and improve the state’s filming incentive. The state’s budget is in disarray and local filming professionals are worried delays in updating the incentive will threaten the industry’s future.

At the moment Maryland offers a 25% filming incentive with an annual film fund of USD7.5 million. The programme has been instrumental in attracting TV projects like new political satire Veep, recent political drama Game Change and upcoming drama House of Cards.

Maryland’s filming industries want to increase the film fund to USD22.5 million annually and extend it to 2016, the Baltimore Sun reports. The state’s filming industries stagnated between 2007 and 2010, so there’s a very real worry that productions will move elsewhere without the upgrade.

We wanted to shoot in Maryland because of the locations, crew and support that we were receiving, but if the necessary incentives were not available, we would have had to shoot season one elsewhere.

John Melfi, Producer

John Melfi is a Producer on House of Cards and spoke to the outlet: “Having the incentives available was a major factor in deciding to shoot House of Cards in Maryland. We wanted to shoot in Maryland because of the locations, crew and support that we were receiving, but if the necessary incentives were not available, we would have had to shoot season one elsewhere.”

The Maryland filming incentive was worth just USD1 million annually until last summer, when a bid to boost it to USD15 million was halved at the last minute. Even increasing the film fund past USD20 million takes Maryland out of contention from the major US production hubs, but it would be enough to sustain a smaller-scale TV industry.