Hulu legal drama “Reasonable Doubt” will be shooting its second season in metro Atlanta after producing season one in Los Angeles.
It’s unclear why Onyx Collective, a production company owned by Disney, made this move. Georgia does have generous uncapped tax credits for production companies while California provides only a limited amount of tax credits to parse out any given year. Hulu spokespeople attached to the show have not responded to a query about the move.
This is clearly less than ideal creatively for the producers since the show is fictionally set in Los Angeles and Atlanta has limited backdrops that resemble the sunny, seaside West Coast city.
At least three other scripted TV series have shot in Atlanta while being fictionally set in Los Angeles: Lifetime’s “Drop Dead Diva” (2009-2014), AMC’s “Lodge 49,” (2018-19) and Netflix’s “Cobra Kai” (2018-present).
“Reasonable Doubt” stars Emayatzy Corinealdi as Jax Stewart, a brilliant and fearless corporate defense lawyer who juggles work, family, friends and a complicated personal life while bucking the justice system every chance she gets. On the surface, her life seems solid but she makes some ethically questionable decisions along the way.
Kerry Washington is one of the executive producers.
Season one came out in September 2022 and was renewed for a second season in April just before the writers strike began. Reviews from critics were largely positive on Rotten Tomatoes and viewers gave it a 77% positive rating.
In the past couple of years, Atlanta has become a bigger draw for big budget movies than big budget episodic TV series.
And series do not typically switch cities between seasons because of the inherent cost of moving sets and actors and hiring new crew.
NBC’s “Good Girls” in 2018 left Atlanta’s Third Rail Studios after one season as part of an agreement with star Christina Hendricks. MTV’s “Teen Wolf” won a lottery to get tax breaks in Los Angeles so it departed Atlanta in 2012 after two seasons and ran for four more seasons. (A “Teen Wolf” movie for Paramount+ was shot in Atlanta last year along with a spin-off show, “Wolf Pack,” both of which debuted earlier this year.)
When North Carolina capped its tax credits, Fox moved “Sleepy Hollow” to Atlanta from Wilmington, North Carolina, in 2015 for its third and fourth seasons.
“Reasonable Doubt” will be shooting many of its indoor scenes at Eagle Rock Studios in Norcross.
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