[Now Filming] Trio of Scary Movies Haunting Wilmington
Hollywood producers are rushing east to cash in on North Carolina’s new tax incentives that were designed to bring more film productions to the state. The initiative is working, as the amount of productions and the money generated from those projects skyrocketed in the last year.
Vera Farmiga stars in ‘The Warren Files’.
According to NC Department of Revenue tax records, film, television, and commercial productions spent more than $121 million in North Carolina and created approximately 10,500 jobs in 2011, a sharp spike from all prior years on record.
Currently, the director of the original Saw is filming The Warren Files with Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga in Wilmington, right up the street from where the director of Saw 6-7 is directing his own latest thriller Jessabelle, and where Anne Heche and Rufus Sewell are also filming their latest supernatural horror film The Occult.
Amber Stevens (‘The Amazing Spider-Man’) stars in ‘Jessabelle’.
The Warren Files is inspired by the true story of a Rhode Island family who claimed they “lived among the dead” in the 1970s, and who hired paranormal investigators Ed and Loraine Warren to help them battle the spirits that reportedly haunted their farmhouse.
The Occult follows a small commune dealing with a prophecy that predicts the coming of the Devil’s daughter. As the shared 18th birthday of five girls approaches, a sequence of murders causes panic to spread through the community, making some wonder if the prophecy is coming true.
Jessabelle is about a girl who is forced to return to her father’s home in Louisiana when a car accident leaves her without the use of both her legs, but what she finds there is a mystery surrounding her own birth.
Patrick Wilson (‘Watchmen’) stars in ‘The Warren Files’.
Then of course, there’s Iron Man 3, which also just started filming this week at EUE/Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington for a May 3, 2013 release date.
Already in the can, Colin Firth and Emily Blunt (below) filmed Arthur Newman, Golf Pro (also co-starring Heche) last fall; and production just wrapped earlier this year on Writers, starring Greg Kinear, Jennifer Connelly, Kristen Bell, and the new Snow White herself, Lily Collins.
Emily Blunt and Colin Firth on the NC set of ‘Arthur Newman, Golf Pro’. (photo: News and Observer)
Hollywood is not coming but already here, and in response North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue has proposed $1 million in the upcoming state budget to train Tarheel residents in how to work on major movie productions in an effort to prepare the local workforce so that they too can now be among those who benefit financially on each opening day.
Voice your thoughts on the new ‘NC Hollywood’ in the comments below!
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