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PITTSBURGH — We’ve seen the street closures and shuttered sets, even the occasional sighting of movie stars. But post-pandemic moviemaking is heating up, and Pennsylvania is one of the stars of the show.
“They’re knocking on Pennsylvania’s door to the tune of a billion with (I don’t know what number is supposed to go here – please add a dollar amount) dollars of production by October,” the senator said. State Camera Bartolotta.
But before that point, Pennsylvania’s tax incentive programs for these film companies topped out at $70 million, and Bartolotta said it was hurting our economy by having to turn down business.
“This industry in the Southwest alone had 509 productions in 2019 and it has a $5.3 billion revenue return to Pennsylvania,” Bartolotta said.
In this year’s budget, she raised that number to $100 million to allow our state to compete for more opportunities. The benefits extend into small towns for business owners like Lorianne Burgess.
“We had American Rust, we had ‘Mindhunter’ on Netflix, we had ‘A League of Their Own’ and most recently we had ‘A Man Called Otto’ with Tom Hanks,” said Burgess, owner of Stangl’s Bakery.
Burgess said companies invested in her business by updating the floor and facade to match the movies, but she said the real impact comes after the movies are released.
“People are starting to say, ‘Oh, they filmed ‘Mindhunter’ here’ or ‘A League of Their Own’ or ‘Oh my God, Tom Hanks was in that bakery, I want to go. That’s when you start to realize the impact it has on the city and the businesses in the city,” Burgess said.
Bartolotta told Channel 11 that this incentive amount will hopefully last for three years as she hopes some of these film companies will keep coming back to our city.
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