Having a movie star governor in California has done little to stop feature films from abandoning production in and around Los Angeles – once the undisputed movie capital of the world, the Los Angeles Daily News reports.
A year-end report released Wednesday by FilmLA Inc. showed that location production for big-screen movies dropped by 7.4 percent in 2006. This comes as other states in the U.S. including New York, New Mexico and Louisiana are now offering significant financial incentives that California does not.
“It is frustrating,” said FilmLA Executive Director Steve MacDonald. “When you look at the percentage increases in other jurisdictions, you have to realize that a lot of that is coming at the expense of jobs and revenue in California. If you look at the success of other state programs, you would think there would be a desire to do something that would take back production that has gone to other areas.”
Sacramento has done little to try to remedy the situation. A bill introduced last year was modeled after New York’s incentive package and proposed offering a 12 percent refundable tax credit based on qualifying state expenditures. It never made it to the floor of the state Senate and the deadline to re-introduce it or any new bills is next month.
