By RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com, filed January 20, 2015
Fox Television CEO Dana Walden told the Wilmington, N.C. Star News that drama "Sleepy Hollow" would move production from that city to Atlanta if the show gets a third season.
North Carolina has cut back its incentives program for films and TV shows to just $10 million a year. With CBS's summer series "Under the Dome" scooping up half of that, Fox didn't feel the remaining $5 million in tax credits was enough to stick around.
Atlanta's tax credit program has no dollar limit, which is why dozens of scripted productions are here now, including AMC's "The Walking Dead," ABC's 'Resurrection," NBC's "Constantine" and Lifetime's "Devious Maids," to name a few.
This is potentially good news for Georgia but only if "Sleepy Hollow" gets a renewal. The show opened big during the 2013-14 season but slipped big time in its sophomore year.
This season, its overnight ratings are generally in the 4 to 5 million range with multi-platform usage lifting that to 8.8 million, which includes DVR usage and on-demand over 30 days, through November 30, 2014. Of 13 Fox series, "Sleepy Hollow" ranked fifth, behind "Gotham" (14.5 million), "Family Guy" (10.6 million), "Bones" (9.7 million) and "Masterchef Junior." (9.2 million).
Based on executive comments, it appears the show is more likely to survive than to die. (TVbythenumbers, which gauges show cancellations, thinks the show still has a better than even shot at getting renewed.) Walden told critics at the TCA press tour that the show will be less serialized and have a slightly lighter tone in the future: "We're excited about some creative changes on the show and bringing it back to something that feels a little more episodic in nature, that has closure and doesn't feel quite so serialized. But we really love the show. We love Tom Mison and Nicole Beharie. They have fantastic chemistry. We feel like it's a really unique series."
In Wilmington, the show is shot primarily at EUE/Screen Gems studios. EUE/Screen Gems also has extensive space in Atlanta.
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