Time traveling characters, invisibly trapped characters, clueless scientists and terrorists in training will be roaming the Cape Fear area this year, as Wilmington continues to attract television productions.
Several TV pilots are slated to film soon in the Port City, and could stick around if they are picked up, officials said.
“It’s my understanding that if these pilots go to series, they would continue to shoot them here,” Wilmington Regional Film Commission director Johnny Griffin said Tuesday.
Monday evening, during a panel discussion about the local film industry, officials announced the advent of three new TV projects along with the return of Sleepy Hollow and Under the Dome to begin filming their second seasons this spring.
The newest project, announced Monday by EUE/Screen Gems executive vice president Bill Vassar, is a pilot for Red Zone, in which a retired CIA operative returns to active service after a major terrorist incident in Washington, D.C. The pilot is a production of NBC Universal for CBS.
Vassar also mentioned that the production staffers for ABC’s Secrets & Lies pilot are set up at EUE/Screen Gems. The drama is adapted from an upcoming Australian show and follows a man’s quest to find the murderer of a young boy.
And a crew from the FX channel will be coming to town by the end of February to prepare for the shooting of a pilot for the comedy How and Why. Shooting is slated to start sometime in April.
After a slump from 1999 through 2010, filmmaking activity in the Wilmington region has come back strong, providing work for a variety of people, from crew members to extras. In 2011, film production spending in the Wilmington region totaled $113 million, up significantly from the previous year’s $44 million expenditures.
In 2012, with the help of Iron Man 3, production spending locally rose to $247 million.
Griffin estimated in December that spending in 2013 would total between $130 million and $150 million, although he did not have final figures from several productions, including Sleepy Hollow at the time. In an interview Tuesday, he said that estimate was still valid.
At Monday’s forum, Griffin emphasized the impact that film activity has on the local economy.
“When projects are in town they spend a lot of money – lots of it on small stuff that can be bought at any store in town,” he said. “That includes wardrobe items, furniture, carpets. If you build sets at Screen Gems you start with an empty box.”
In addition to patronizing local purveyors of everything from lumber to lace and filling restaurants and lodgings, the film industry is a major employer, Griffin said, noting that film projects are the second-largest local employer of off-duty police officers, whom they use for security and traffic control.
Other panelists were casting director Vanessa Neimeyer and Terry Linehan, a filmmaker and University of North Carolina Wilmington film studies department lecturer, both of whom talked about the growth of their respective endeavors.
The panelists emphasized that, if the state legislature does not renew the state’s film incentive – scheduled to lapse on Jan. 1, 2015 – film-related activity across North Carolina will cease, leaving a sizeable dent in the local economy.
