The credits aren’t rolling on Shreveport’s film industry—not yet, anyway.
But as The Shreveport Times reports, caps on film tax credits and ending Millennium Studios’ long history of local productions were body blows to what had become one of the area’s proudest industry achievements. Still, local film workers say they aren’t planning a wrap party. More work will come, they’re confident, but it’ll take allied voices in government.
Diego Martinez, president of Millennium Studios, recently announced the Shreveport film studio is “going dark,” a decision he said was by the Nu Image, Inc./ Millennium Films headquarters in Los Angeles. All five employees will have lost their jobs by December, and no more films are planned beyond the one ongoing production.
The studio has been downsized over the years as business slowed. About 125 people are working on the studio’s production—The Tale—currently being filmed, Martinez says, which is usually the number working on any given film to come to the studio.
“When there’s a project going on there’s 100 or more people working on it,” he says. “On The Tale, a lot of those people live here locally and are veterans of the industry and very good at what they do.”
The parent company, Nu Image, Inc., did not respond to The Shreveport Times’ requests seeking clarification on the future of the state-of-the-art film studio after it goes dark in December. Martinez says he expects the answers to come within the next six months.
