Friday, April 13, 2012

Watch Out Hollywood, Brooklyn is Coming!

Commissioner Katherine Oliver with Mayor Michael Bloomberg
It is getting more and more desirable to shoot movies in the Big Apple, while filmmaking in Hollywood is on the wane. For example, Steiner Studios, New York’s largest sound-stage venue, just added an additional 45,000 square feet to its space.

Now the home of such favorite shows as HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” located at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, has a total of 355,000 square feet of filming space.

According to Katherine Oliver, commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, there are now a total of 13 TV pilots filming there.

Los Angeles says there is stiff competition between filming in the Golden State and in the Empire State, blaming the struggle on about $420 million in tax breaks offered by New York. The incentive, says Hollywood, has caused an 11.5 percent drop in the number of TV dramas being filmed there.