Perhaps it’s just coincidence. Perhaps it’s all the national publicity Celtic Studios received in the weeks after the August flood, when the cavernous sound stages at the Airline Highway facility served as a Red Cross shelter for flood victims.
Whatever the reason, Celtic Studios Director Patrick Mulhearn’s phone is ringing again with calls from movie producers interested in filming in Baton Rouge.
In the past two weeks, Mulhearn has received at least six calls from interested producers. That may not sound like a lot, but it’s six more calls than he has received all year. After the Legislature in mid-2015 drastically scaled back the state’s once generous movie tax credit program, the state’s film industry has pretty much dried up.
It’s still too soon to say whether anything will come of the recent inquiries. But Mulhearn says three of the six were serious calls from producers who asked Celtic for a bid.
“As much as we loved having the Red Cross and FEMA here it would be fantastic to have the film business here again,” he says.
Mulhearn, who made multiple appearances on national news programs during the flood coverage and also testified before a congressional committee, says he doesn’t think the publicity has had anything to do with the renewed interest in the Baton Rouge facility. Rather, he attributes it to recent efforts by Louisiana Economic Development to reach out to the film industry and explain that the state’s movie tax credit program, though altered, hasn’t gone away entirely.
Also, he says there is a growing optimism that Gov. John Bel Edwards’ administration will lead efforts during the 2017 legislative session to fix some of the problems that were introduced into the tax credit program by the Legislature in 2015—namely, that the program is capped on the back end, after producers have already made expenditures, instead of upfront.
“I don’t think anybody is expecting the program to ever be as robust as it once was,” he says. “But the hope is that some changes will be made that could go into effect in 2018.”
—Stephanie Riegel
