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'The OA' And 'The Affair' Among Four TV Shows Relocating Production To California
"The OA" (Photo courtesy of Netflix)
Four television shows have announced plans Friday to relocate to California to receive the state’s production tax credit, according to Variety.
Netflix's The OA and Showtime's The Affair will be bidding adieu to New York to shoot their next seasons in the Golden State, and FX's Legion and Fox's Lucifer will be coming south from Vancouver. The L.A. Times reports that the latest round of moves raises the total number of series relocating to California since the tax credit program was expanded in 2015 to 11.
The expanded state tax credit program was a response to the erosion of California's role as the world capital of film production. Generous tax credit programs in Georgia, Louisiana, New York and other states had been chipping away at California's dominance for years, luring film crews to set up shop in other cities across the country and abroad. California's tax credits are awarded on "a merit-assessment scheme with increased emphasis on job creation," according to Deadline Hollywood.
Tax credit allocations are broken up by production type, meaning that film and TV tax credit announcements are made separately. The next round of tax credit allocations for films will likely be made in August.
“We’re wrapping up year-two of Program 2.0 on a very high note with a record number of relocating TV series,” California Film Commission Executive Director Amy Lemisch said in a statement. “The tax credit program is working as intended to reaffirm California’s status as the preferred choice for film and TV production.”
“Los Angeles is a key character in ‘Lucifer.’ With the storylines revolving around iconic locations in Hollywood and Southern California, we are thrilled that the California incentive now makes it competitive to base the show in the L.A. area," Lucifer co-showrunners Ildy Modrovich and Joe Henderson said in a statement.
All this news is music to the ears of Hollywood crew members, many of whom have long since grown weary of commuting for months at a time.
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"We were doing reshoots in Los Angeles [after shooting the bulk of a film in another state], and everyone on the crew who is so tired of shooting in 'rebate states' was almost emotional to be sleeping in their own beds and then going to work in the morning," one veteran film producer told LAist.
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