The TV show Banshee will stop filming in and around Charlotte. It looks to be the first casualty of North Carolina’s soon to expire film incentive tax credit.
For all of its three seasons Banshee, a campy show about an ex-con hiding out in an Amish community has called Charlotte home.
HBO, which produces Banshee for Cinemax, its sister network, has no official comment. But cast and crew for the show took to Twitter today to thank Charlotte and surrounding cities for being a good home for the program’s first three seasons.
Most telling, the Louisiana state webpage lists the show as now doing pre-production work in New Orleans.
This news comes the same day Aaron Syrett, the former head of North Carolina’s film office said he expects an “exodus” of TV shows and movies from this state as the current incentive program sunsets at the end of this year.
Under that program qualifying productions received a quarter out of every qualifying dollar they spent in state, with a maximum payout of $20 million per production.
The General Assembly is replacing that system with $10 million for grants to TV shows and movies that film in North Carolina.
But the new system is capped and can give no more than $10 million in total each year. Under the old system there was no overall cap.
State audits show Banshee spent more than $67 million on its second season – the most recent numbers available. That qualified the show for $16 million in incentive payments.
