RICHMOND, Va. (WWBT) -Some of your favorite shows and movies have been filmed here in Virginia, but productions have slowed down a lot, and we’ve even missed out on some projects recently.
This affects over 5,000 workers in Virginia’s film industry. On Wednesday, many workers went to the capital to lobby for two bills they say can improve the situation.
“I hope the General Assembly supports our film bills and the General Assembly signs them so that we can continue to make amazing work here in Virginia,” said Emily Wyman, Location Scout/Manager.
Tons of groups packed the capital, talking to legislators and hoping to make changes to improve our state. That included workers in Virginia’s film industry.
“We have two bills in the General Assembly right now to increase funding for Virginia’s film incentive programs,” said Beau Cribbs, spokesperson for IATSE local 487.
SB1179 and HB2108 were introduced to chambers last week. Both aim to increase the “motion picture production tax credit” cap from $6.5 million to $8.5 million this year.
“At this point, we have no money left in our film incentive program for the state of Virginia until 2026, and thanks to the strikes of 2023, we’ve only had one project come here, and we need to work,” said Alicia Ayoub, Chair of the lobbying committee.
Not only is funding depleted, but Virginia has not expanded tax incentives in the last decade, leaving our state out of big projects and productions.
“This incentive program is not only important to us as film crew members, but it’s important to the commonwealth of Virginia as far as the total economic impact,” said Ayoub.
“There are a lot of studies out there that say for every dollar invested by Virginia, you can get 13 dollars back in economic growth,” said Cribbs.
A lot of that money feeds into our small businesses across the state.
“There was a show on Apple TV called Swagger that was shot here, and in season two alone, they hired 1,400 Virginia-based vendors. 1,400 businesses got business because this show was here that wouldn’t have got this business elsewhere,” said Cribbs.
Shows like Turn and Homeland have been some of our state’s biggest projects in recent years, and we run the risk of losing more. For example, two major television series are evaluating filming here.
These two bills could put Virginia in a much more competitive position to land projects like these.
“So the economic ripple effect is gigantic, and so I think it’s a wise and worthy investment by the state to move forward with these bills because we already do very well with what small funds we have. Imganine what we could do with more?” said Cribbs.
They are looking to make a short-term modification to the existing incentives.
A $5 million budget amendment will be added to the grant, providing the governor’s motion picture opportunity fund, and a $5 million increase will be added to the Virginia motion picture tax credit.
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