QUESTION: So Why does North Carolina need film incentives anyway?

ANSWER:  Ya know, if you would have asked this question 10 years ago, we would have said, we don’t because it was more about North Carolina’s array of locations, crew members, and infrastructure that attracted the productions.  Now instead of producers, directors and/or location scouts coming to the area, the studios send accountants first.  Hollywood producers now instruct accountants to draw up budgets for several possible states and make decisions on the economic impact on their production, not the locations.

North Carolina for years was the third largest movie making state behind CA and NY. However in the past decade, the film industry has become a global economic driver.  We are now competing with not just other countries, but a majority of the states that have seen NC flourish and want a piece of the action.  Other governors and state legislators acted in response when they saw the jobs and the economic impact. Let’s take Georgia, for example.  In two years Georgia’s state economy will have reaped the benefits of 7 billion dollars in direct spending from the film industry, which by the way took North Carolina almost 30 years to do. So if North Carolina had no incentives, then North Carolina just couldn’t compete with the other 43 states for those jobs and economic stimulus. “Show Business” is just that, a business. Could all 44 states that are participating be wrong?