Film & TV Tax Incentives in the U.S.: Courting Hollywood from Focal Press covers entertainment tax incentives, which are one of the greatest tools in the arsenal of filmmaking. They pay a portion of production expenditures back to the filmmaker, while creating powerful economic engines for the states who implement them properly. They are high in the list of considerations for executives to sign off before a movie receives the go-ahead for production, even to the point of dictating the location of where a production is filmed. Yet, they are misunderstood by the filmmakers who use them, the politicians who create them, the economists who measure them, and even the scholars who study them. This book puts all the pieces together in a comprehensive look at how the entertainment industry works, how it uses incentives, and how incentives can benefit a filmmaker or a state.
2. Understanding Entertainment Incentives
3. Understanding the Entertainment Industry
4. The Political Climate
5. Infrastructure
6. Making Incentives Work
7. Avoiding Pitfalls
8. The Union Equation
9. Benefit Businesses
10. Courting Hollywood
Daniel Wheatcroft, a 25-year voting member for the Oscars and former executive at Universal Pictures, developed over 200 major motion pictures including Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, Backdraft, and Apollo 13. He is a producer or director of network television specials and broadcast features and has developed projects with Warner Bros, Paramount, Disney, NBC, CBS, to name a few. Wheatcroft is CEO of Shoot To Thrill Productions, LLC, specializing in entertainment properties. He has lectured at the University of Southern California (USC) and has taught at The University of Alabama and at Birmingham-Southern College.