Lights. Camera. Tax incentives!
A priority bill that sponsors hope will see the Bluegrass State get on the big screen more often – and provide more economic benefits to the commonwealth – passed out of a Kentucky Senate committee Thursday.
Senate Bill 1 would establish the Kentucky Film Office within the state’s Cabinet for Economic Development, and call for the hiring of an executive director to market the commonwealth to the entertainment industry. It would also work to create a single point of contact for productions, streamlining connections between the industry and the state by providing resources and support for things like location scouting and filling out film crews.
The bill also establishes the Kentucky Film Leadership Council, which would be charged with overseeing the Kentucky Entertainment Incentive program. That group would then administer the program with the application fees going to support the operations of the Kentucky Film Office, alongside 2% of gross receipts from the state’s 1% transient room tax and a $500,000 base allocation each year.
Pikeville Republican Sen. Phillip Wheeler – the bill’s sponsor and chair of the Senate’s Economic Development, Tourism, & Labor committee – said the bill is designed to help Kentucky capitalize on its blockbuster economic potential and its natural beauty.
“I firmly believe that once we have the right people in place and they see what Kentucky has to offer, that the film industry will fall in love with the commonwealth and feel the same way about it that we do,” Wheeler said. “The goal of this is not only to show off our state but, at the end of the day, it's about [how the industry can] have a positive economic impact and [for Kentucky] to make money.”
Kentucky’s entertainment tax incentives have evolved in fits and starts. The state passed a series of film tax incentives in 2009, which saw Walt Disney Pictures bring the production of “Secretariat” to the commonwealth. Major changes were then made in 2015, 2018 and again in 2022, when the legislature made the 30-35% film and TV tax credit refundable again.
During Thursday’s meeting, Wheeler cited a University of Louisville study that he said found the state’s KEI program generated $200 million in economic impact in 2022 – plus an estimated $128 million in impact to derivative businesses and $27 million in local, state and federal tax revenue.
Wheeler said that if the state made that much with a simple website and no one leading the marketing charge with the state, he’s excited to see how Kentucky could emerge as more of a filmmaking hotspot if this bill goes into effect.
“Kentucky has not reached its full potential,” he said. “There's no reason why Kentucky can't become the next Georgia. As we've seen from that state, that passed tax incentives about the same time as Kentucky, they have created a multibillion dollar film production industry utilizing a formula similar to [SB1].”
In recent years, Kentucky’s entertainment tax incentive program has helped bring projects like Netflix’s Ted Bundy biopic “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” and Ethan Hawke’s “Wildcat,” which tells the life story of author Flannery O’Connor, to the Bluegrass State. It’s also helped to bring touring Broadway productions to places like the Carson Center in western Kentucky, where crews have done technical rehearsals for lengthy touring productions.
Since 2022, $75 million in KEI funds has been up for grabs annually. Through October 2024, a total of just under $74 million had been disbursed, according to data supplied by the state. That’s not to say the demand isn’t there.
In that same time frame, film production companies requested more than $180 million in incentives, but not every project checks all of the necessary boxes or crosses the finish line to get their tax credits.
With Wheeler at Thursday’s meeting were representatives of two of the state’s biggest film ventures: Merry-Kay Poe, the president of Louisville-based Unbridled Films, and Misdee Wrigley Miller, who owns LexStudios soundstage and is the CEO of the Wrigley Media Group in Lexington.
Poe’s production company is a part of a $70 million redevelopment project announced earlier this month to turn Louisville Gardens into multiple production soundstages. She said during a press conference before the bill was heard that more productions in the state means more jobs for Kentuckians – and that movies’ end credits prove that.
“Every name of the 100 or so names that you see scrolling across the screen: That represents at least one job,” she said. “Those jobs span every sector imaginable … but mostly they're from the creative and the technical sector, and they provide hands-on learning opportunities and also rapid career advancement.”
Poe said that the opportunity for the northern Kentucky area to potentially benefit from the Sundance Film Festival – which could still select Cincinnati, Ohio as its new home – is massive. The prestigious Utah-based film fest also considered Louisville as a potential site last year.
According to Poe, KEI-approved productions have been active in well over half of Kentucky’s 120 counties since 2022.
Wheeler believes that the bill also has the potential to amplify film industry and tourist activity outside of the Golden Triangle of Louisville, Lexington and Cincinnati, Ohio.
“I firmly believe rural Kentucky can profit off this bill, not only through the actual feature film development, but by drawing additional tourists into our area,” he said.
During that press conference, Wrigley Miller cited a study released by the Illinois Production Alliance in 2024 that found that for every dollar the state spent on film tax incentives, nearly $7 was generated in economic impact. She said Kentucky should be shooting for those sort of returns on investment from the industry, and that marketing is the key.
“Our incentives yield a strong return, fueling jobs, local spending and tax revenue. So why aren't the filmmakers lining up here? Why haven't we hit our incentive cap?” she said. “Well, the answer is pretty simple: We're missing a megaphone.”
Senate Bill 1 now goes to the full Senate for a vote.
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