Is Atlanta really a Hollywood mecca?

Only to someone who is accustomed to having possum for dinner is Atlanta any sort of mecca at all.

For whatever reason, Atlanta's become the BlackTertainment capital of the world.

Atlanta is basically Newark NJ without the charm.

The CW loves it... must be a sweet heart tax deal. I was reading casting calls for Dynasty once when I was bored at work... pays a whopping $11/hr. Probably a union state or some protection.

Some of Black Panther was shot on Tyler Perry studios.

R4, they don't seem to love it any more. Last year, all but 1 of their pilots was filmed there. This year 5 of their 8 are back in Vancouver.

Its a fucking ugly city with some of the most bougie people in America. I will pass FOREVER.

Pinewood Studios was built outside of Atlanta for all the Marvel movies. The last 3 of the Fast and Furious films were filmed there. Probably the last 4 of Melissa McCarthy's films were filmed there. As previously noted, a lot of CW series are there. All of Tyler Perry's stuff is there.

But with the new California film rebate incentives, we're starting to get a few big budget films and tv shows that were previously filmed in Vancouver- Captain Marvel, Teen Wolf and some of Ryan Murphy's shows.

As someone up thread said, Atlanta is mostly associated with black entertainment, primarily hip hop music. Several studios there. Movies and TV? Not so much.

People are going to get super hero fatigue (if they haven't already). Is it really wise to build a studio just for those movies?

Plus the exchange rate favours Canada... it's about 20 cents on the dollar... so a standing 20% off is not a bad thing on every buck you spend.

Do they even hire local crew in Atlanta or do they come in from LA and leave when the production is over?

$9.5 BILLION in economic impact in 2017 doesn't sound too shabby to me. Or is this thread populated by a pack of mealy mouthed LA queens scared the movie industry there is losing too many jobs and people won't be impressed that they live there one day? Trust me, anyone with a brain isn't impressed now and never has been.

And the above link does work.

Worked for me R14

Oops, misread.

All movies shot on location use a certain number of people from Hollywood, but the largest percentage of crew used in the movie industry in Atlanta are people who live in Atlanta. And I have read on several occasions comments from the industry people in L.A. making movies there that the crews in Atlanta are tops, otherwise there would be no benefit to using them and the costs would skyrocket having to ship in and house crews from California.

[quote] Atlanta is basically Newark NJ without the charm.

Spoken like a true racist POS.

Atlanta Is Experiencing A Film And TV Production Boom

More than 70 film and TV projects were shot in and around Atlanta in 2017. So many, the area has developed a permanent production industry.

Movies Filming in Atlanta this Summer: Avengers, Infinity War, Godzilla, The Passage…

Ugh - well let’s hope they can import a hint of glamour to that boring AF ugly ass town. I have to spend time there for (non-film) work, and it’s so uninteresting, annoyingly pretentious, and semi-Southern hick that I would honestly choose almost any other city in the US if I could.

I'm sure the folks in Atlanta were especially happy when you hauled your uppity ass out of town R23. Silly bitch.

People like R22 are posting articles about 2017. It seems to be a different story for 2018, at least television wise.

[quote] People like [R22] are posting articles about 2017. It seems to be a different story for 2018, at least television wise

The first article that I posted is from Jan 2018. The last article that I posted is from April 2018. Of course the televisions series that were filmed there last year (2017) will most likely continue to film there this yr (2018).

It really does have a legit film and production business that employs lots of people. But, no, it isn't to the level of "L.A. of the South."

R23 had to get out of Atlanta as fast as he could to avoid all the people trying to throw hot grease on him. He is not well liked, anywhere.

I lol'd to the title of this thread. 😂

Atlanta is only boring to people who are too lazy or stupid to get out and do all the things there are to do. The stars who come to Atlanta to film are resoundingly complimentary to the town. They seem to find lots to do there in their off time. But then, a dullard like R23 wouldn't be able to find anything interesting in most places.

R26, your article is not from April 2018, it just defaulted to today's date. It says Rampage is continuing to film this month. Rampage was RELEASED IN THEATERS last week. A Bad Moms Christmas came out LAST DECEMBER. There was a trailer for Tag in front of Rampage.

[quote] [R26], your article is not from April 2018, it just defaulted to today's date. It says Rampage is continuing to film this month. Rampage was RELEASED IN THEATERS last week. A Bad Moms Christmas came out LAST DECEMBER. There was a trailer for Tag in front of Rampage.

What is interesting to do in Atlanta? What are the hot gay bars? Hip restaurants and clubs?

[quote]Atlanta is mostly associated with black entertainment

Ah so that means it doesn't really count as entertainment, right? After all, it's "just" black entertainment. DL's racism is alive and well I see.

Last time I checked we're only 4 1/2 months into 2018 numb nut.

There's a Swinging Richard's I think, though I've never been. I prefer more efficient entertainment, and there are some VERY hot, young "masseurs" on the normal sites. The traffic is terrible when you're running around the city for meetings, but I always leave ATL satisfied.

There doesn't seem to be much to downtown.

Midtown is where it's at.

Actually, the east side is where it's at.

Downtown is pretty much a concentration of office towers and convention hotels, and government complexes.

I'm not in the industry, so never paid attention to where things were made. I'm an artist, and there's a gallery in Atlanta that sells my paintings, and they called the other day, and said a movie shooting there starring Tajari P Henson and Tracey Morgan wanted to use one of my paintings for the set, so I was happy to hear that, and that they shot movies in Atlanta!

Atlanta has had a good run in film/TV production for the past few years. These things seem to go in cycles though with all these states chasing the business. Canada was hot for film production in the 90s and then it waned a bit. California offering tax incentives will definitely help them retain some productions. New York must offer good incentives too, because I see a lot of shows filmed there that don't necessarily have to be. I just saw a film today ("The Leisure Seeker") and could tell immediately that Atlanta suburban homes were substituting for what was supposed to be Wellesley, Mass and Stone Mountain Park subbing for Pennsylvania. Whether Georgia near at the top in a year or two remains to be seen. "

Those projects being filmed this year were already booked from a 1-3 years ago. What worries the film industry in Georgia are the loss of a few important projects after the Delta debacle and the anti-gay and racist bills coming up the Georgia legislation. The 2020 slate has them worried.

What Delta debacle?

California losing the film industry to other markets is greatly exaggerated. Especially when the entertainment industry is ingrained in the California culture and economy. California still produces the most jobs in the film industry and all the major studios create, greenlight, and finance most of their films in California. A small example, Los Angeles (just the city) produced more than 14k film editor jobs in 2017. Those kind of numbers are only seen in California. What you see right now is California's entertainment industry diversifying to accommodate for the digital age. California tax rebate laws were designed to accommodate Netflix, Amazon and independent productions, and to no surprise both companies are building their studios in Los Angeles.

Hollywood has purposely extended its outreach by integrating film and digital media studies in 27 community colleges around the LA area. The goal is to make all 114 community colleges in the state offer a certificate or Associates in Art major in Digital media and programming. 6 of the top film schools are still in California, in other words academically, culturally, and financially the film industry in California is still by far the dominant film market. You could even argue that its tentacles reach Canada, Atlanta,Oregon Kentucky, Texas, Britain, and Australia because a lot of the Hollywood big project go straight to those places. In many ways they are dependent of California's film industry.

Georgia has a good thing , why mess it up? But I fear the Georgian government will destroy Atlanta's film industry. A shame because the arts are a great tool for creating social progress

List of movie studios in Atlanta. Looks pretty impressive to me.

Screen Gems Studios

Tyler Perry Studios

Blackhall Studios

Pinewood Studios

Eagle Rock Studios

Atlanta Metro Studios

Mailing Avenue Stageworks

Triple Horse Studios

Atlanta Filmworks Studios

Raleigh Studios

Spitfire Studios

Big Peach Studios

Bobbcat Studios

CoCo Studios

Encore Film & Music Studios

StudioPlexx 47

Studio Space Atlanta Studios

Third Rail Studios

That is a long list. But they aren't giant lots like Universal or Warner Brothers.

R47, the vast majority of the studios in the L.A. area are quite small in size. Only the big 3 or 4 could be considered "huge"

Screen Gems, Pinewood, and Tyler Perry in Atlanta are all quite sizeable. Tyler Perry's new studio lot is 330 acres, being built on the old Ft. MacPherson military base purchased by Perry. His old studio (up for sale) is also no tiny lot. Screen Gems is located on the old Lakewood Fairgrounds. Pinewood is a totally new construction and constantly going through additions.

Screen Gems Atlanta Studio

Tyler Perry Studios

Blackhall Studios Atlanta

Eagle Rock Studios Atlanta

Third Rail Studios Atlanta

Triple Horse Studios Atlanta

Where do you read casting calls for ATL r4. Facebook?

If you want to be taken seriously as a director (film or TV), you don't film in the sticks and claim it's NY or LA. If you're just filming crappy shit, it's fine.

Bullshit R56. PURE BULL SHIT! You do realize that there is a large percentage of movies shot on location, far away from Los Angeles, don't you? Or are you that stupid.

R57? Calm down. I meant that if a movie is set in NY, they can't film in Toronto and expect to be taken seriously.

"Breaking Bad" is set in NM. It would look ridiculous to claim that and film in NY.

[quote] the vast majority of the studios in the L.A. area are quite small in size. Only the big 3 or 4 could be considered "huge"

You mean the top 7 R48 and that's not even counting the Animation studios. California has over 100 studios that cater to the film industry. What are you bragging about?

It would be suicide for Georgia's entertainment industry to have such a nationalistic *cough* racist *cough* legislature, but where things headed Atlanta's boom might turn into a bust.

Yes, but it's expensive crappy shit, r56- the average Marvel movie budgets filmed in ATL is $150 mil, as are the Fast and Furious films. Hunger Games was filmed in ATL too.

Los Angeles- we get the microbudgets (Blumhouse), a lot of reshoots for the bigger films (I just worked on Skyscraper, Aquaman, and I saw the Antman camp across the way), and mid level films. Thank the gods Netflix and Amazon are bringing business in. It's been a long time since we had a huge budget do the bulk of their production here in L.A.

Congratulations, R41. That is very cool.

R60 except for the golden age of Hollywood, most big productions have always filmed East. Whether because our culture has always thought of the East as more culturally important or because New York was just an ideal location. Big productions coming back to the West coast (especially to Los Angeles) is something relatively new. California and New York still retain the top two spots for independent filmmaking, obviously for their film culture.

Kentucky is a new comer in the film industry and a clear competition to Atlanta's film industry which has lost productions to Los Angeles, New York, and Vancouver.

Kentucky will have a hard time getting dedicated film people to even step foot in the place.

What happened to Wilmington, NC? Was is the anti-gay attitude of the state Legislature that drove producers away?

[quote]Kentucky will have a hard time getting dedicated film people to even step foot in the place

Except for the part that is the fastest growing market in the film industry, add Oregon and Texas to the mix as well.

You L.A. folks need to face the fact that times have changed and the movie industry is branching outside of L.A. and California because it's simply good for business. No, L.A. and California are not the end all any longer. The vast majority of people who move there leave there eventually, once they see it's not all it's cracked up to be. And it's only going to get worse as the state devolves more and more into a 3rd world country.

R66? CA alone is a global economy. The third world would be flyover and places like WV where they're still waiting for COAL to come back. The states that aren't even self-sufficient. I get that you flyover/southern types have an inferiority complex when it comes to the coasts, but no one in their right mind wants to live in KS with a bunch of regressives - that's why there's a brain drain.

r54, like Michigan and soon to be Louisiana, North Carolina lost their film incentives (usually a Dem gov will install it and and a Repub gov will take it away). I have friends both in MI and NC who moved to ATL because of all the work there.

[quote] I get that you flyover/southern types have an inferiority complex when it comes to the coasts,

And I get that you airhead L.A. types have a faux superiority complex about anything outside your little bubble. Trust me Toots, the vast majority of the rest of the country couldn't give a fat rat's ass about you or your self proclaimed southern California mecca.

Black Atlanta is great. So is white Atlanta. But they seem to be very separated.

[quote]You L.A. folks need to face the fact that times have changed and the movie industry is branching outside of L.A. and California because it's simply good for business. No, L.A. and California are not the end all any longer.

R66 is projecting. LA has never lost its entertainment industry, in fact it's only growing, film industries have grown outside of California since the silent era without affecting Hollywood. It is nothing new. Why would L.A mourn the rise of the film industry in other parts of the continent/world?

Stop feeling inferior R66. Hollywood has the big studios and small studios, film academia, film finance, Box office, and film culture. Its supremacy is not up for debate. You sound threaten by Los Angeles, but why ? Atlanta's film industry acts as a subordinate for Hollywood studios, why feel threaten when they are the reason the film industry in Atlanta even exists?

It makes no sense.

That's funny since Atlanta is known as probably the most integrated city in the country. You want to see separation of the races, go to Boston.

I find Atlanta far more interesting than any of the Texas cities (except maybe Austin) and it's a lot better looking, too. Verdant and hilly vs flat, brown and dusty Dallas vs swampy, flat Houston

The thing with the film industry is that it's relatively mobile and easily lured away by tax incentives.

Whether they actually work is another matter.

[quote]The thing with the film industry is that it's relatively mobile and easily lured away by tax incentives.

They are actually not, especially in places where film entertainment is an institution. Places like Los Hollywood (which should be consider California as a whole) and New York entertainment sprawls far beyond film. We are talking about television, digital media, animation/illustration, and education. This is why when you hear things like Los Angeles is going to collapse you have to roll your eyes. If the Los Angeles film industry were to collapse, everyone else that depends on it will do as well.

It's a "right to work" state, so one doesn't have to be union to get a job in film production. Which, of course, means the jobs do not pay well, and there is little protection for the workers. I work in film, and I see its potential for exploitation. Having said that, it would be an excellent place to get one's first job to break into the industry. If one works hard and builds a portfolio, work in LA, or on union productions on location, will be much easier to get.

The last three new American movies I saw in a theater were [italic]I, Tonya[/italic], [italic]Game Night[/italic] and [italic]Love, Simon[/italic]. All were shot in Atlanta.

R76, it's far more mobile than you think and the competition is coming from overseas.

[quote]And I get that you airhead L.A. types have a faux superiority complex about anything outside your little bubble. Trust me Toots, the vast majority of the rest of the country couldn't give a fat rat's ass about you or your self proclaimed southern California mecca.

Let's get something perfectly straight, babe: A "bubble" applies to those who aren't actually exposed to different cultures, foods, art and human beings. So when I constantly see this colossal bullshit about those of us who live in places like CA and NY being the ones living in a bubble when fucking flyover is so scared of "Sharia Law" coming to their stupid state (where they don't even have a baker's dozen of brown people) that your statehouses full of hicks create legislation over some fictitious threat, then we know who actually lives in a bubble.

There are a lot of movies shot in Atlanta. I worked exclusively on features until around 2006 when they left for Louisiana, Atlanta and New York. Before that at the end of the 90's a lot of the movie work left and went to Canada because it was cheaper. Some film work went over seas to Prague. Hollywood finally followed all the other industries and went to cheaper places to make their product and they blamed the crew and the money we make. In truth movie got crazy expensive when major stars like Jim Carrey started asking for $20 million, he was the first to ask for that kind of money. Also at fault are the perks the stars get. Some have trailers that they rent to the studio for huge sums of money. One trailer to hang out in and sometimes a work out trailer. . .

Any way, Los Angeles is mostly TV now.

r66 the branching out you talk about has been happening since the late 90's. Those of us who have been in the industry are aware of this. But you are wrong, no one is running away from So Cal. The reason work left is because producers were being offered tax incentives in other places. Basically that means producers were getting bribed. With creative accounting that extra few million ends up in their pocket. No, I'm not lying. On many projects a producer can get a cut of that money he or she saves from the budget. It happens in construction too, it's called front end loading. You budget a lot of money up front, more than you would need and if it's left over after the job is finished the contractor keeps that money, so do producers. And there are also the contingencies. . . so many ways to mess with a budget.

So the work didn't leave because Atlanta is nicer, it left because people in Atlanta don't get paid as much as people in Los Angeles do, cost of living is cheaper. What I want to know is how has New York grown in production when it is a difficult place to shoot in and more expensive than LA.

Seriously. No one lives in a bubble more than these people whose life are these flyover small towns r80. Which is why the people tend to be so close-minded and provincial.

R72 just my experience. When I was there for a project with blank Atlantans I met virtually no whites. Vice versa.

I believe you about Boston. Found people there rather creepy and cold.

The Originals, Sleepy Hollow and The Resident are filmed across the street from my work in Conyers, Georgia. Some Shaq and Kevin Hart movie was filmed 2 miles away. Vampire Diaries was filmed across the street from my work. And some new series on Oprah's channel called "Love Is" is being filmed by my house

We're 30 miles outside of Atlanta and we're doing all right. No one is leaving to go anywhere. As a matter of fact, the studio just bought some other property with empty warehouses on it so they can expand

What are "blank Atlantans"? Are these people who have blank expressions on their faces?

I find it amusing that Georgians almost seem to want New York and Hollywood film industries to collapse, don't they see that Atlanta studios work for Hollywood? They produce content for the big companies. Nobody is making or financing projects out of Atlanta, those projects are coming to Atlanta already financed and mapped out. Atlanta should hold on to what it has and stop electing officials that legalize discrimination against women and gays. Hollywood is flaky as fuck as NC/SC and Louisiana can attest. Hollywood has other playgrounds (Vancouver, Australia,Britain, Texas) to produce its big budget films if Georgia plays difficult.

Cause it's so difficult to finance a project outside of Hollywood.

I hate that Hollywood is full of people, who go on about how taxes should be higher, that the corporate tax rate is too low, but then they are part of an industry that chases tax incentives like a crack ho trying to get a fix. I truly wish tax incentives and rebates etc... were just outlawed completely for corporations.

Then there will be a lot more bankruptcies, foreclosures, and people put out of work, R89. [italic]Love, Simon[/italic] would have cost twice as much as it did if it had been shot in LA.

R90 No, the corporations can and will survive without the incentives, they just don't want to. They just use the scare tactics of bankruptcies, etc... to scare politicians into playing ball. With the advent of technological advances, the cost of making films and TV productions should naturally be declining, not increasing as they are, artificially, because of the corporations and unions, both of which continue to act like they are making films in the 1960's instead of the 2010's.

Exactly my point, R91. And don't let the State Government in Sacramento off the hook for driving up the cost of living and doing business in California. It all adds up and puts more pressure on films to be ultra-big hits in order to make money.

At least in the 1960s you could see where the money went on screen, even on a flop.

R66/ R69 lost whatever credibility it had when it called California " a third world country" and revealed its ignorance and pathetic envy.

Having lived in California, New York and the south, let me assure you that there are excellent reasons that California is one of the top half-dozen economies globally. Sound stages in LA are in short supply because the industry here is booming, and as other posters have pointed out, the entertainment culture is forever entwined with the state's. Films are conceived, pitched, green-lit and budgeted here, and LA is where the power players call home. They do not want to live in Atlanta (though Atlanta is hardly a hellhole), North Carolina, Louisiana, Vancouver or (God forbid) Kentucky.

Luckily, outlets for entertainment product have exploded and there's enough production (film, TV and digital) to parse out beyond the California state line.

And posters like R77 who point out the paltry pay and lack of protections in right-to-work states like Georgia are spot-on.

Isn't Atlanta worried that they will become like Wilmington, New Orleans and Michigan?

r82- From what I understand, NY doesn't charge any location fees for Manhattan proper.

r94- Not if Tyler Perry, CW and Marvel/Disney can't help it, although they were ready to pull out because the governor was about to install some anti LGBT law.

R95, CW only has two pilots for this year. They went back to Vancouver.