Louisiana Department of Economic Development | ⭕️Poply Buzzly🎈Kulture Knews

Productions are flocking to the Delta — but it almost wasn’t so

By Brent Lang

Over the coming months, Louisiana will host two big-budget films, “Pirates of the Caribbean 5” and “The Fantastic Four.”

They’re just the showiest carpetbaggers to a state that has recently earned the moniker “Hollywood of the South.” Also hitting the Delta will be a new take on the “Left Behind” series starring Nicolas Cage, the third season of “American Horror Story” and the sequel to “Hot Tub Time Machine.”

But it almost wasn’t so, after some state politicians mounted an effort to scale back Louisiana’s production incentives.

[…]

One, a proposal by Gov. Bobby Jindal, would have capped the subsidy as it applied to above-the-line salaries exceeding $1 million, while another would have cut the incentives in half. The governor eventually decided to pull his plan over concerns it would negatively impact production in the state, while the other proposal never even came up for committee hearing.

Other legislation to tweak the incentives slightly made it through the state’s House of Representatives but was never taken up for a vote in the Senate.

[…]

Not everyone is enamored with the credits. The non-profit advocacy group the Louisiana Budget Project estimates the state spent $231 million in 2011 on incentives and roughly $1 billion over the last decade — with little to show for it.

“Film tax credits are a wonderful deal if you’re in the film business, but it hasn’t been a good deal for the state,” Jan Moller, director of the Louisiana Budget Project, told TheWrap. “Every dollar spent on film incentives is a dollar that can’t be spent on roads, on education, on health care or on any of the very important things that are being squeezed badly.”

French counters that looking at the issue in this way fails to account for the amount of economic activity that film production inspires. He notes that a 2013 report by the Louisiana Department of Economic Development found that the local production generated $1.1 billion of spending and contributed more than $770 million in household incomes while creating 14,350 jobs last year.

“This is not designed to turn a profit, it’s meant to put out an incentive to encourage economic activity,” French said. “The citizens of Louisiana draw a huge benefit as a result and they want this industry to come here.”

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