Under the Dome set to shoot third season in Wilmington

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Despite the lack of film incentives, one popular production is staying in town.

Protesters were out in full force yesterday with a message to Gov. Pat McCrory: they want film incentives in North Carolina. Hours later, “Under the Dome” announced plans to stay in the port city for its third season.

“This has been difficult for us with the new film incentive program,” Wilmington Regional Film Commission Director Johnny Griffin said.

Supporters say without a film incentive package, similar to the one set to expire at the end of this year, the number of movie and TV productions in our state will greatly decrease.

Banshee already left the state, and others are expected to follow.

“We’ve got starting 2015 a grant fund that has $10 million. Theoretically ‘Under the Dome’ would take half of that because they would maximize their spending here, so that only leaves us $5 million more which basically means we can only incentive one or two more shows,” Griffin added.

EUE/Screen Gems Executive Vice President Bill Vassar says even though it’s great that one production is staying, that still leaves four production crews uncertain about their jobs.

“We are five crews deep in this town. There are four crews that aren’t going to work so far next year that we know of. There are crews in Asheville and Charlotte and Winston Salem that won’t have work,” Vassar said.

But what film workers say they are most worried about is the fact that no new productions are scouting the area or setting up shop.

“In the spring of 2015, as of right now, we know that we’ll have ‘Under the Dome’ which is one show. I think spring of last year we had six or seven shows here.”

We tried reaching out to the state Secretary of Commerce for her comment but we did not hear back.