‘Hollywood South’ Hopeful For The Future

Hollywood South may not be dead just yet!

For the last 10 years, Louisiana has been known as Hollywood South, as the state is known to give generous incentives for production of movies and television.

Last year we saw lawmakers cap the budget on $180 million. That meant a loss of about 90% of productions in the state.

According to local filmmaker Julie Fay, that was a loss of an exuberant amount of jobs for the state.

"It was a shock," Fay said. "Whenever I see that there is a shortfall 10,000 to 30,000 jobs, immediately because of that number, I think those are all the Hollywood jobs. Because, roughly on a typical film, they're somewhere between 10,000 to 30,000 (jobs) depending on how big the film was."

Governor Edwards has announced that the Louisiana Economic Development organization will conduct a comprehensive review of the state's Motion Picture Production Tax Credit Program. The idea is to get the best ideas for reform and practices moving forward. This will be discussed in next year's legislative session.

Fay is one of many that are hopeful.

"What I'm hoping is the fact that we were so strong for ten years and the fact that we have all these buildings and infrastructure and everything here, we have a big crew base," she said. "Atlanta, of course, has to train up some people; we already got a huge, thousands of people, who are trained up. My hopes are that everything will come back."

Let's hope that is what happens, as at least 36 other states offer film credit incentives. Hopefully it's not too little, too late.

[KPLC]