Location filming in Los Angeles increased by nearly 10% in the third quarter of 2013 compared to the same period last year, the city has announced. Feature production rose by nearly 20% between July and September, while commercial filming went up by 18%.
BBC Worldwide will be boosting its UK filming spend by 10% for the next 12 months, bringing the total to GBP200 million. Drama productions on the scale of The White Queen are likely to be among the type of projects to benefit from the budget hike.
The Alaskan location filming incentive has proved controversial, but the state has decided to keep it alive on a long-term basis. Over the next decade USD200 million will be channelled into the programme, with a series of changes designed to boost its appeal to feature projects like Big Miracle.
The first quarter of 2012 was a period of decline for TV location filming in Los Angeles, with the total number of permitted shoot days falling by nearly 10% on 2011, figures from FilmLA show. Filming for TV drama fell by nearly 19% and reality shows by nearly 20%.
Alaska’s filming industries are renewing their call for a ten-year extension to the state’s existing incentive programme. The current scheme is worth USD100 million and expires in 2013, but supporters are campaigning for a lengthy extension that could attract more long-term projects.
Admiralty House in Mount Wise, Plymouth, on the UK’s south coast has doubled for 10 Downing Street for a new TV show. Comic Strip used the building for a one-off film noir spoof that sees former Prime Minister Tony Blair accused of murder and on the run.
Last week was a good one for the Los Angeles film industry. Citing figures from Film LA, the Los Angeles Times reports that feature film production days reached nearly 180, an increase of almost 50% on the same time last year.
Paris-based Publicis Groupe, which owns Publicis, Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi and ZenithOptimedia, has announced a profit growth of 31% for 2010. The organisation’s full-year organic growth was 8.3%, with revenue just under USD7.4 billion.
A trio of Alaskan politicians are campaigning to extend the state’s existing filming incentives scheme beyond 2013. The current programme is only two years old but the various projects that have applied during that time could end up delivering more than USD100 million to the Alaskan economy.
Republican Susana Martinez, the recently-elected Governor of New Mexico, is considering plans to reduce the state’s filming incentive by a dramatic 10% in line with efforts to cut public spending.