WILMINGTON — The fallout from recent changes to the state’s film grant program is starting to be felt statewide. In Wilmington, local creator of the popular Netflix show “Outer Banks” may relocate his prequel series as he and industry leaders urge the state to find a solution before North Carolina exits the conversation for good.
“Outer Banks” creator Jonas Pate told Port City Daily Tuesday he is making calls to Charleston for “Kildare” to potentially film there, after recent operational changes to the North Carolina film grant and rebate program came to light last month.
The North Carolina General Assembly allocates $31 million to the film grant every fiscal year. However, this year the state’s commerce department, which oversees the North Carolina Film and Entertainment Grant, was told to make an operational change. It essentially caps the total amount the grant can disperse in any year at $31 million. However, the department, which expected the legislature to step in if it needed more funding, has more than $106 million in commitments that could come due in the next few years.
Thus, the North Carolina Film Office is not currently making new awards. Without reversal of the cap, additional funding from the legislature, or changes to the project’s currently committed to, the incentive lacks money for new productions until 2029.
READ MORE: NC film grant incentive allocated $15M, likely won’t fund new production grants
It will be the second time Pate has moved a project out of his home state. Though he lives in Wilmington, he and his twin brother Josh, and show creator Shannon Burke, relocated “Outer Banks” to Charleston in 2019. The move followed the industry-wide blacklisting of the state because of the legislature’s passage of House Bill 2, also known as the “bathroom bill.”
“Outer Banks” just wrapped its fifth and final season in the Lowcountry. The Charleston Post & Courier reported this week “Outer Banks” and “The Righteous Gemstones” spent $465 million in the state. For “Outer Banks” alone, that figure includes the hiring of more than 1,700 cast and crew members in addition to 4,500 extras and daily hires.
“Kildare” was greenlit last week by Netflix.
Pate, who with his wife started a YA production company, told Port City Daily he had other project ideas in the pipeline. Pate started the company with a goal to hire North Carolina film crews and shoot in North Carolina. The first film from the company, “Driver’s Ed,” wrapped in Wilmington in April 2025 and released to theaters in May this year.
Though “Outer Banks” has been, by far, his biggest success, with 200 million streams to date worldwide.
“I have Maddie Cline in this season of ‘Outer Banks’ wearing an ‘I Believe in Wilmington’ shirt for three episodes,” Pate said. “I don’t know how much louder and prouder we can be about North Carolina, but we can’t keep having the rug get yanked out from underneath us.”
Pate said he has reached out to Sen Michael Lee (R-New Hanover), the Department of Commerce and the governor about the current quandary.
Lee did secure $15 million in additional funding for the film program in a bill making technical corrections to this fiscal year’s budget. According to Lee, it will help fund the gap in commitments and available dollars.
According to IATSE Local 491 business agent Darla McGlamery, a fix isn’t soon forthcoming. She told Port City Daily Sen. Lee has indicated there’s “nothing they can do until November.” Lee did not respond to Port City Daily’s interview request by press.
Another Netflix show leaving the state, as first reported by WSOC-TV, is “The Hunting Wives.” Its first two seasons were filmed in Charlotte and surrounding areas and received a $15 million grant for both.
According to Stephen Cabinum, president of IATSE Local 491 and rigging gaffer on “The Hunting Wives,” the show has been trying to find a solution to the film incentive problem for months. He said the goal is to begin pre-production on the show’s third season before the second season airs on Nov. 26.
“They can’t wait for that decision to get rolling again,” Cabinum said.
More productions could soon follow suit. Guy Gaster, director of the North Carolina Film Office, told Port City Daily there were at least six projects his office has been close to closing that may now be hampered.
One, as confirmed by Pate and Cabinum, is “Thunder Road,” a Nascar series starring Dennis Quaid and Chase Stokes; the production was scouting locations in the Charlotte region but has since started exploring other states.
This series is separate from the “Days of Thunder” sequel that plans to begin shooting in 2027. Though unconfirmed whether the production is scouting North Carolina locations, the first film, starring Tom Cruise, shot at racetracks and other locations in the Charlotte region.
Johnny Griffin, director of the Wilmington Regional Film Commission, told Port City Daily his office was not aware of any productions close to confirming Wilmington locations. However, two recently shot series will be impacted.
A sequel to the Disney movie “Aquamarine” recently wrapped a pilot, while filming on the second season of ABC’s “RJ Decker” continues. Neither show has been greenlit to continue, but both would likely need to continue shooting in North Carolina without the rebate option or move to another location with incentive money available.
“If you’re doing a major production, then incentives are required for that project,” Griffin said, noting there are few exceptions, mainly if a location is integral to the story. “Studios will not greenlight a project without an incentive being some part of the funding model.”
Though everyone said they were aware of conversations happening within the legislature about the incentive, no one Port City Daily talked to was able to say whether changes can be counted on or why the operating change to officially cap $31 million was made in the first place.
Port City Daily reached out to each state legislator in the tri-county region, including Sen. Lee and Rep. Ted Davis (R-New Hanover), both involved with how the film incentive operates. Only Rep. Deb Butler (D-New Hanover) responded, telling Port City Daily she offered help to Lee but did not receive a response.
Though for those in the industry, their focus is not on how the incentive ended up here, but rather on how the problem can be solved and the economic wreckage coming if it isn’t.
“We’re not looking for one person to place blame,” McGlamery said. “We’re just trying to make sure that everybody that’s involved in these decisions at the state level wants to fix it.”
The fallout
In 2025, film and television production activity in North Carolina generated an estimated $185.5 million in direct in-state spending, meaning money a production company pays to local workers, vendors, and businesses. Additionally, more than 7,000 jobs were created, with production spending reaching 45 of the state’s 100 counties, per the commerce department’s data.
Last year marks the fourth-highest amount since the program’s current inception in 2015. The highest year was 2021 bringing in $409 million, followed by 2024 at $302 million and 2022 at $258 million.
In all, filming is projected to have brought more than $1 billion in direct spending to the state over the last decade.
These numbers account for indirect economic contributions stemming from film production. This includes what money workers and talent spend in the local economy or the tourism generated from fans of hits, like “Dawson’s Creek” and “One Tree Hill,” or even the more recent “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
The film incentive works as a cash rebate, with production companies issued grants for up to 25% of qualifying expenses after a project wraps. The production’s finances also must be audited before the state pays out the money, which happens after a film has wrapped.
“I know that this is rather simplistic, but if you and I are having a conversation and you say: ‘I’m going to give you $100, if you give me $20 back” — I’m going to do that,” Rep. Butler said.
However, Butler acknowledged some legislators don’t feel the same way. Additionally, several studies, some backed by right-wing think tanks, have called into question the effectiveness of incentives, including a 2019 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research that found economic impact to be “mixed.”
Still, North Carolina — ranked the second best state for business by CNBC — offers several other types of incentives.
The Job Development Investment Grant provides discretionary cash grants to compete for new and expanding companies, including Apple and Toyota. Apple’s grant was worth $845.8 million over 39 years for its campus in the Research Triangle Park; Toyota is eligible for $315 million over the same period for its Greensboro plant. The money covers facility costs, amount determined by job creation and state tax growth.
The total future annual liability for all grants awarded in any single calendar year is capped at $35 million per year, though this cap is removed for “transformative projects” backed by $1 billion in private investment and 3,000 new jobs. However, these grants are issued over 12-year periods or longer, not in one tranche like the film grant.
From 2003 to 2025, the commerce department has since disbursed $564 million to companies for the creation of 68,316 new jobs, which equates to approximately $8,264 per job created.
The other incentive program is the One North Carolina Fund, allowing the governor to fund competitive job-creation projects; 269 grants have been awarded since 2007 with a disbursement amount of $64 million and 31,222 new jobs. This results in a final state cost per new job of $2,052.
However, the tri-county region has not benefitted from a JDIG- or One North Carolina-supported project in 13 years. Meanwhile, a third of the projects awaiting awards from the film incentive were created in Wilmington.
Wilmington has long been a filming hub, followed by Charlotte where there is more commercial work. McGlamery pointed out the film incentive has allowed other locations to get on the map as well, particularly Winston-Salem, which McGlamery pointed out has hosted three or four recent projects.
“The School of the Arts in Winston-Salem that graduates talented individuals will tell you, if you go and teach them or listen to them and give them information about the industry, that the first thing that they’ll say is ‘I’m going to New York,’ or ‘I’m going to L.A. because I don’t know about the industry here,’” McGlamery said. “In the past couple of years — we have worked to change that as well.”
Pate mentioned the Duffer Brothers, the Durham-born creators behind Netflix’s hit “Stranger Things.” Though they attended North Carolina public school and university for film in California, they moved their project to Georgia due to having a lucrative tax incentive at the time.
Port City Daily asked McGlamery — who represents around 1,000 union members — what would happen if production came to halt.
“It is mentally disturbing to think about the impact,” McGlamery said.
McGlamery said the union lost 30% of its membership in the wake of H.B. 2’s passage in 2016. Though it was partially repealed in 2017, its lingering restrictions caused studios to avoid the state until 2020, after it expired and was fully repealed.
While the union has a member assistance fund, it cannot support the entire union and many of the Local 491 members will have to move or go back to the general job market outside of film, though it is currently also hard to find a job there. McGlamery said she’s gotten a handful of calls about the fund this week as members “start to get nervous.”
McGlamery also pointed out many camera and equipment businesses have returned in recent years as production picked up again, though without films and series in town, they won’t be able to survive either.
Local soundstages and studio spaces, including Dark Horse that expanded its 40,000-square foot facility in 2024, will also take a hit. According to Kirk Englebright, co-founder of Dark Horse Studios, every production that has set up shop on its stages has been there because of North Carolina’s incentive.
He said he took a call from Netflix this week about potential use of his facility.
“What they don’t know is, we’re pretty much closed for business for three years,” Englebright said. “And I’m having to delicately communicate that.”
The tens of millions of dollars he and his partner, Rodney Long, put into Dark Horse are on the line if new projects stop coming onto their stages. With the overall cap “tapped out for a couple years,” Englebright said it’s a reality that is hard to face.
Mitigation plans are underway, though Englebright said the sound stages don’t host commercials often. Those primarily go to Clutch Studios in Huntersville, run by NASCAR driver Joey Lugano. Independent films also are infrequent at Dark Horse, and both work in smaller budgets.
Griffin pointed out the effects of the film incentive changes, like H.B. 2, will not be confined to the three-year period where the commerce department cannot distribute new awards. He said the longer the dry period lasts, the more the industry will lose trust with clients.
Pate added: “If you’re a studio production head and someone brings up North Carolina in 2029, and your only recent memory is they told me one thing and did another, and it cost my studio millions of dollars that made me look bad — I’m not sending another show there.”
This was echoed by Englebright: “Hollywood doesn’t take lightly when they see stuff like this happening at the state level. They like to see consistency … that the state is going to be there, to continue to incentivize them if they’re going to keep making investments in the state.”
While appreciative of enhancements the legislature brought to the incentive program this year, Englebright said without a cap increase, they don’t matter.
The latest budget increased the film enhancements, allowing a feature film to receive qualifying expenses up to $20 million, instead of $7 million previously. TV moves up from $15 million to $25 million, and the talent cap has been bumped from $1 million to $4 million.
Though the higher caps should, in theory, attract more productions — Englebright said he’s been getting more calls because of them — one feature film or television series could wipe out half the year’s allocation.
“It makes no sense because now you’re depleting the bucket even faster with fewer productions — that is the crux of the ridiculousness,” Rep. Butler said.
Both Pate and Englebright touted New Jersey’s program. After being paused as a cost-saving measure by former Gov. Chris Christie in 2010, the film tax credit program was resurrected in 2018 by Gov. Phil Murphy. Murphy and the New Jersey’s legislature worked together to secure $439 million annually for the program through 2049, with productions offered between 30% and 45% of a rebate.
Locals in the industry believe a renegotiation of the film incentive is due.
Several people who spoke to Port City Daily thought the program should not be capped, like how the state ran its incentive with a 25% incentive prior to 2015. McGlamery said she would like to see more monitoring done on the film incentive’s disbursements to ensure a situation like the current one doesn’t happen again.
Like Pate, Englebright said he, too, has reached out to legislators, the governor and attorneys general offices to advocate for a change. He requested an urgent meeting with Gov. Josh Stein as well.
Everyone agrees stability has to be part of the equation.
“Find the sweet spot, we get comfortable with it, and we leave it alone, so the industry can understand it, embrace it, and know that it’s reliable,” McGlamery said.
Editor Shea Carver conducted interviews and contributed to reporting.
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