‘Secretariat’ film races past Virginia
October 12, 2009 by Al Harris
The story of Secretariat begins in Doswell, Va., on Meadow Farm, where the State Fair of Virginia was recently held.
But the movie about the Triple Crown-winning horse won’t be filmed there.
The Disney-produced film will begin shooting this weekend in Kentucky instead, thanks to an $800,000 grant the producers will receive from the Bluegrass State.
That’s yet another major film production set in Virginia to pass over the state because of its lack of incentives, according to the local film office.
“We did work very hard for them,” said Mary Nelson, communications manager for the Virginia Film Office. “What we offered was the real location and place where it happened.”
But without cash incentives, it wasn’t enough.
“The reality of it is films tend to go where they get offered incentive money,” Nelson said. “Virginia has a modest program. Forty-one states have a program and Virginia is pretty much the lowest funded of them all.”
Nelson said filmmakers used to be primarily concerned with location, but in recent years, since the advent of state incentive packages, filmmakers are primarily concerned about the money. She said because of Virginia’s under-funded program, many productions don’t even bother to scout inside the state.
“They used to call and say ‘what locations do you have?’ and then called to say ‘what incentives do you have?’” Nelson said. “Now they don’t call that much at all.”
As of the beginning of this year, Virginia’s motion picture fund had only about $200,000. Virginia had given the producers of the HBO miniseries John Adams (read the news release for that here) a $1.25 million grant. The production spent $81 million in the state, with an economic impact of $148 million.
Since then the fund has been short on cash, although the General Assembly did pass a bill last session that went into effect July 1 and imposes a 5 percent tax on digital movie rentals in hotels. The proceeds are to be set aside for the motion picture fund.
Nelson said it is too early to tell how much money the tax will generate, but projections are between $750,000 and $2 million a year.
“It is enough to be helpful but not enough to even the playing field,” said Nelson.
For example, Pennsylvania has $75 million in its fund.
Kentucky created its incentive program this year, and the horseracing movie is the first to receive funds.
“Secretariat” is not the only film to pass Virginia by. “The Box,” starring Cameron Diaz, is set in Richmond but was filmed in Connecticut after that state offered a $4 million package.
Meanwhile, Lake Michigan is standing in for Virginia Beach in the Ed Harris film, “What’s Wrong with Virginia?”
The next major project the Virginia Film Office is hoping to land is Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln.”
In a May interview with BizSense, film commissioner Rita McClenny said that film, which will star Liam Nielson as Abraham Lincoln, is to start production at the end of the year. The location is between here and Massachusetts.
For more on the Secretariat movie, read “Secretariat’s Story Coming to Big Screen” on Forbes.com
Al Harris covers the film industry for BizSense. Please send news tips to Al@richmondbizsense.com.
With a family member who works in film making in Virginia, I am very much aware of the impact Virginia’s non-competitive position has had on those who work on films in Virginia: its driving them out of the state or out of the field, to seek employment elsewhere. Some are trying to “work” out of Virginia, but may eventually relocate out of the state. This will drain the state of an imporant film making resource, compounding the problem. As reported in the article, movie productions bring in milions of dollars of revenue to the localities where they work. Film makers and many other states understand this. That is why the states offer incentives. Why Virginia has failed to stay competitive, I do not understand. Aside from those who work directly on film productions, a number of Virginia businesses…hospitality, retail, building materials, etc… have lost out.
This is yet another reason to vote for Bob McDonnell. Liberals do not comprehend that in today’s world you can have all the advantages, but for business to come here it’s the cash that talks. As long as liberals run this state we’re not going to get business like this. It’s the same way with corporate business relocation outside of Northern Virginia. It’s easy to recruit to NoVa because of DC. NoVa is why Virginia gets these awards about best places to do business. But we could get twice the business we get outside of NoVa if the liberals would wake up and start putting some real cash into business recruitment.
So the goverment spent $1.25 on John Adams and got $81 million dollar immediate economic impact. I guess somebody wasn’t doing there job, don’t they usually spend $81 million and get $1.25 million in economic impact. I guess whoever usually makes these decision was on vacation and someone who doesn’t have a political agenda made that decision.
Well I guess they got back in time to stop that $800k going to the Secretariat film. Who knows that might have produced $100 million in economic impact and if that happens we might get out of the economic recession before they can get all there social programs in place.
“I am from the Goverment and I am here to help.” Yeh Right
Answer to James. You don’t have a clue and I’m sure Bob is a great guy, but I’m in the film business, located in Texas where we’ve just passed an incentive program worked by both sides of the isle. Texas is controlled by “conservatives” not “liberals”, the sponsor of our incentive “Bill” is a Democrat. So I’m not sure who comprehends what, but I do know people that think everyone else should think like them generates the real problem. Lets work together for the common good, that means business has to profit and grow, and people have to work for businesses to feed, cloth, pay for health insurance and educate their families, just like all of us in the film /entertainment world we need the incentives to keep our jobs and create new business for new jobs.
Thanks