What do Betty White, Kevin Hart, Oprah Winfrey and Jeremy Renner have in common? All have made movies in Georgia that have shot scenes at the Capitol.
Georgia's Statehouse was turned into a lovely train station for the 2011 Hallmark Hall of Fame movie starring White and Jennifer Love Hewitt. It became a courthouse for "Kill the Messenger," which came out this year and starred Renner and Rosemarie DeWitt. It's also a courthouse in "Selma," the Golden Globe-nominated picture about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for which Winfrey is a cast member and producer. It's in select theaters now and opens nationwide Jan. 9.
And it'll be a nightclub in "Ride Along 2" starring Hart, Ice Cube and Olivia Munn, due for an early 2016 release.
The stately building is a most fitting spot for filming activity, as the tax legislation passed under the Gold Dome in 2008 opened the moviemaking spigot. Gov. Nathan Deal even allowed his office to be trashed temporarily so the pilot for the now-canceled TV show "Revolution," about people stumbling through life without electricity, could film there in 2012.
But moving forward, projects filming at the Capitol will pay more for the honor. It used to cost $5,000 to get a license to film there, but the Georgia Building Authority recently voted to increase the price tag to $25,000.
"It's a historical building and shouldn't be used as a cheap movie set," said Steve Fanczi, the GBA's deputy executive director. "We're a working Capitol and this would limit disruptions."
Since 2008, the building authority has collected $1.6 million in rent and other fees from companies for rolling film at the Capitol and other state properties. (The nearby archives building is also a favorite with film crews: The Will Ferrell comedy "Anchorman 2" used it as a studio, "Kill the Messenger" turned it into a news bureau, and the upcoming Marvel project "Ant-Man" with Paul Rudd and Michael Douglas turned it into a biotech lab.)
Deal said charging just $5,000 led to an onslaught of applications.
“The $25,000, we think, is a reasonable figure,” he said. “And it will probably drop the number of requests.”
Contributing: Daniel Malloy and Nicholas Fouriezos
