HOLLYWOOD SOUTH, AT A PRICE
Georgia’s generous tax credit system has helped make the state the No. 3 filming location in the U.S. behind California and New York.
Production companies can earn tax credits up to 30 percent of what they spend in Georgia when they meet certain standards. That’s caused a stampede of production companies and the industries that service them — such as studio operators like Pinewood — to Georgia.
Georgia’s tax credit program has become the state’s single largest corporate perk. The program directed $925 million to production companies from 2009 to 2014, according to a study by Georgia State University.
The Georgia State study said there were about 4,200 direct film jobs in 2014, citing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, but industry estimates say Hollywood supports 24,000 Georgia jobs.
The incentives remain controversial. Critics say the jobs created locally are often low paying and easily moved if credits dried up, as has happened in other states that decided they were not worth the cost.
When Michigan folded its program, Hollywood disappeared. Southern rivals Louisiana and North Carolina capped the value of their programs in recent years and Hollywood responded by shifting work to Georgia and other states.
FILMED IN FAYETTE
Some of the movies and TV projects shot in whole or in part at Pinewood Atlanta Studios and other locations in Fayette County:
Ant-Man, starring Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas
Captain America: Civil War, starring Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johannson
Passengers, starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence (coming soon)
Spiderman: Homecoming, starring Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr. and Marisa Tomei (coming soon)
FILMED IN FAYETTE
Some of the movies and TV projects shot in whole or in part at Pinewood Atlanta Studios and other locations in Fayette County:
Ant-Man, starring Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas
Captain America: Civil War, starring Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johannson
Passengers, starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence (coming soon)
Spiderman: Homecoming, starring Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr. and Marisa Tomei (coming soon)
FILMED IN FAYETTE
Some of the movies and TV projects shot in whole or in part at Pinewood Atlanta Studios and other locations in Fayette County:
Ant-Man, starring Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas
Captain America: Civil War, starring Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johannson
Passengers, starring Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence (coming soon)
Spiderman: Homecoming, starring Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr. and Marisa Tomei (coming soon)
Glenn Falkner, owner of Body Magic Collision in Peachtree City, got an unusual request in the spring of last year: Paint 70 buses, garbage trucks, taxis and other vehicles, and do it fast.
The motley fleet, used in the blockbuster Marvel film ”Captain America: Civil War,” was part of a surge of business Falkner has seen from Pinewood Atlanta Studios, which opened in a rural area of Fayette County in 2014.
“To me, it was like having 13 months in the year instead of 12,” Falkner said of the revenue boost.
Georgia taxpayers provided nearly $1 billion in subsidies to the film industry from 2009 to 2014, according to a recent study. But the state’s mushrooming movie and TV production business is often ephemeral, taking place at temporary facilities and locations that appear and disappear like traveling circuses. Getting a handle on its impact is difficult.
Pinewood is different. With aircraft-hangar sized soundstages, offices, its own Home Depot and 2,000 workers filing in and out on any given day, it is one of the most tangible examples of the industry’s growth in metro Atlanta.
Its impact is tangible, too, and growing.
“It’s been a coup for us. It’s certainly put us on the map for economic development, particularly in the film industry,” said Carlotta Ungaro, president and CEO of the Fayette Chamber.
The Pinewood campus, a venture backed by Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy and other investors, is expanding to double production space, with at least two more mammoth soundstages under construction.
Cathy and development partners Bill Lynch and Lew Oliver recently unveiled a new wrinkle: a massive $700 million town center called Pinewood Forrest with apartments, senior cottages, single-family homes, shops, restaurants and offices and hotels. The first phase, covering 234 acres, aims to be Fayette's version of the more walkable, urban settings popping up in suburbs like Alpharetta and Sandy Springs.
Cathy and his partners also said it will be a haven for creative people and young professionals who tend to flock to urban centers.
At a press conference unveiling Pinewood Forrest, Cathy, a native of Atlanta’s southside, said his development will help “reinvent the community.”
Cathy called Pinewood “the most exciting, dynamic film studio perhaps anywhere in the world. It’s certainly the most technologically advanced.”
Other metro communities have embraced Hollywood in other ways — Senoia, in Coweta County about 10 miles south of Pinewood, revels in its ties to “The Walking Dead.” Covington, east of Atlanta, is known as a location for “The Vampire Diaries” and the old series “In the Heat of the Night.”
Fayette’s ties aren’t the result of any single show or movie, but rather stem from Pinewood’s prodigious production capabilities.
While many in Fayette’s business and political class embrace Pinewood, some residents note the loss of what drew them to the county, which is largely rural outside the planned community of Peachtree City and the county seat of Fayetteville.
Don Fowler moved to Fayette in the late 1960s. He and his wife and sons relished the pine trees and rolling pastures on their 10-acre spread on Hood Road.
Now Pinewood is nearby, and the retired Delta Air Lines mechanic said when he’s jolted awake most mornings at 5 a.m., it’s not from a rooster crowing. More often, he said, the noise comes from explosions set off during movie productions and construction crews laying gas and water lines for Pinewood Forrest.
“The country life, the country scenery, all that’s gone,” Fowler said.
Hollywood South
Gov. Nathan Deal's office says 245 television and movie projects were shot in Georgia in fiscal 2016, spending more than $2 billion in the state. That's more than seven times the film business spending in Georgia in 2008.
The largess of Georgia's incentive structure is controversial. Critics say the jobs created locally are often low paying and easily moved if credits dry up. Pinewood's establishment and the construction of other large filming campuses are signs, film industry backers say, of permanent infrastructure developing.
Pinewood is a British operator of movie studio campuses. The James Bond series and Star Wars films shoot at its facilities outside London. The Fayette venture doesn't produce movies itself, but rather rents space and facilities to other companies that do.
The gated Pinewood campus is about 20 miles south of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, amid a smattering of houses on large tree-lined lots. A few years ago, it was a wheat field next to a vacant elementary school that had been built for suburban growth that got derailed by the housing bust.
Without the sign out front, the nondescript complex could be mistaken for a small industrial park. Inside, though, it’s where A-listers like Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson shoot summer blockbusters.
Marvel’s “Ant-Man” and “Captain America: Civil War” filmed there. A sequel to the 2014 smash “Guardians of the Galaxy” is underway.
Nearly two dozen businesses are corralled on-site solely to serve the entertainment industry. One is a Home Depot that isn't open to the public. It was built to provide lumber and other building materials to craft sets.
An Enterprise Rent-A-Car location, said to be among the chain’s most profitable, is among 21 businesses housed in the former elementary school.
The Georgia Film Academy — a collaborative effort among some of the state's colleges to train workers for the industry — is based at the Pinewood campus.
The ripple effect spreads well beyond. Forget trying to rent a home or apartment in Fayette these days.
Film “gypsies,” nomadic crews of behind-the-camera workers that come in for a few weeks or months at a time, scoop up what’s available. Movie stars rent bigger homes or stay in posh Atlanta hotels.
Cathy and his team plan to offer housing in Pinewood Forrest that range from extended-stay hotels to other short-term rentals for migrating crew. Locals in the business will be able to afford apartments and other homes at the development, they said, with single-family homes and even estate homes planned in the first phase.
An affluent county
Fayette is the 22nd-largest county by population in Georgia, and one of the wealthiest in the state. Long known as a bedroom community for airline workers and a nice place for retirees, Fayette has diversified. But its growth has slowed since the recession. County officials fret about how to draw more young adults.
“The one good thing Pinewood Forrest will do is it puts (us) on the millennials’ radar,” Fayette County Commissioner Steve Brown said.
Film producers reap the benefits of Georgia’s film tax credits, and Pinewood itself is the beneficiary of local property tax breaks over 20 years that will be worth millions.
It remains to be seen if millennials, or anyone else, flocks to the new development, and for now the studio venture is mindful of blending into the existing community.
Brian Cooper, Pinewood’s top officer in its Atlanta operation, recently rode a John Deere tractor through the fields across from the studio, getting it ready for Cathy and investors’ announcement of Pinewood Forrest. Locals say Cooper has been known to mow the grass of some of Pinewood’s elderly neighbors.
“It’s the Dan Cathy effect,” Pinewood development partner Rick Halbert said, referring to the emphasis on gracious service and biblical principles that Chick-fil-A is known for. (Cathy’s involvement in the studio and development ventures is separate from his role at the fast food chain.)
Fowler, who lives a short walk from the Pinewood campus, said Pinewood Forrest “looks good on paper,” but he’s not yet sold.
“It’s going to be great from their point of view but it’s just a major change for us,” he said.
“I don’t know if it’ll be a good thing for me personally. It’s still going to have some type of impact on the county. Good or bad? We don’t know yet.”
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