With two television series now in the filming process locally, Wilmington Regional Film Commission director Johnny Griffin has his sights set on the second half of 2016.

Griffin is getting calls from producers about projects that could happen the second half of 2016, when North Carolina will be in its 2016-17 budget, which allocates another $30 million for the state’s film and entertainment grant program.

“Currently the $30 million [of state film grant money for the current fiscal year] is spoken for, between the two productions here and three in the western part of the state,” he said Monday. “Once the word gets out [that the grant money is committed], you’re off the list.”

The three other film projects that have qualified for the current fiscal year's $30 million grant pool are an ABC remake of Dirty Dancing, to be shot in western North Carolina; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, an independent film being shot in Silva; and Shots Fired, a TV series about racially charged shootings being shot in the Charlotte area.

A continual up-and-down cycle is “just the new reality of where we are with the grant,” Griffin said. “Money’s there for later in the [calendar] year, but projects that are being greenlit now and need a place to go are looking elsewhere.”

Griffin confirmed that the two television series shooting in Wilmington, Six and Good Behavior, are projected to spend a combined $55 million locally and to employ 350 to 400 people between them.

“They came in January and will be here through June. We have some good business,” he said. “We would like to grow that and have more business. We hope in the second half of this year to have several projects here."

Bill Vassar, executive vice president of EUE/Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington, said that both series are using facilities at the studios. Six is shooting on acreage surrounding the studios as well as on sound stages on the lot.

“This capability was one of the major reasons the production chose Wilmington,” he said Monday in an email.

Meanwhile, small businesses in the area are seeing some demand from the projects.

While the volume of film-related business thus far in 2016 isn’t up to that of past years, Sabrina Davis is hopeful it will increase.

“We’re keeping the fire kindled, and maybe it will burst into flames,” the president of Port City Signs & Graphics Inc. said Monday.

Davis said her company is already getting work from Good Behavior and is keeping her fingers crossed that she will hear from Six as well. As in previous years with films and television shows, the printing company supplies decals, signs and stickers: “Things to make a set look authentic,” she said.

Essential to getting new business from local projects is maintaining relationships nurtured in prior years.

“Art directors tend to be somewhat consistent ... and work with the same people year to year,” she said.