March 19, 2021

Lawmakers Look To Attract More Film Productions To Montana

(mtrp.org)

As film and TV-show production become more common in Montana, lawmakers are already seeking to expand a new tax incentive and encourage the industry to plant firmer roots in the state.

Paramount’s Yellowstone, the most famous recent production out of Montana, is an example of what legislators hope to see more of. The show was mostly shot elsewhere until last summer when the new tax incentives kicked in.

The Montana Department of Commerce has given tax breaks to 26 productions since 2019, when the Montana Legislature passed the MEDIA Act. The law gives media and film companies a 20% tax credit on their production spendings, with additional credits in some situations.

Montana Film Commissioner Allison Whitmer said the incentive draws film crews for movies, television series and commercials to the state.

“We have things like Yellowstone, which is contemporary westerns, but we also have reality shows and we have shows about dinosaurs,” she explained. “We have shows about people going into the woods and learning about flora and fauna.”

Supporters of the tax credit say it is a worthy trade-off that should be taken step further — the state loses a few million dollars a year in tax revenue at the outset but adds more economic development over the long term.

“I’ll leave it to the proponents to go through the numbers to show what a wild success it was,” said Wylie Galt.

By: Megan Myscofski

Continue Reading at mtpr.org

The pandemic won’t be the end of movie theaters, but it will forever change them

(cnn.com)

Are the movies over?Not the art form itself, but the actual movie-going, sitting in a theater surrounded by strangers and popcorn, experience?It’s not hard to find social predictors who argue that it might be, thanks to the increasing number of movies that quickly hit streaming services and allowed you to watch in your family room, along with the growing numbers of films produced directly by — and for — services like Netflix.Tara Lachapelle, who covers the entertainment business for Bloomberg, wrote: “We have learned to live without movie theaters. Even the ones that make it through the crisis may find that online-streaming apps have stolen away audiences for good.”Of course, many social predictors in other eras could not foresee live theater surviving once drama and comedy became available in movie form; nor that radio had a chance after a television set became a common part of the living room furniture. Art tends to adapt to circumstances; cave walls give way to canvas, but people keep on drawing.Given that the genre of movies viewers were choosing to see in theaters before the pandemic had already tilted heavily toward comic book-dominated, hugely expensive blockbuster films, the safest bet is that studios will turn to even more of them for theatrical releases and steer their smaller, artier titles (the ones that tend to win the awards) toward streaming services after a brief release in the theater (in order to qualify for those trophies, of course).

By: Bill Carter

Continue Reading at cnn.com