New Mexico has boosted its filming incentive fund and is to encourage producers to shoot beyond its established hubs.
The south-west US state is already a key filming location for screen stories with desert settings, but its appeal is set to grow further now that authorities have more than doubled the incentive’s film fund to $110m a year.
An additional $100m has been made available to secure shoots that may still be a year or more away from principal photography.
“We are already seeing a massive increase in films landing here in New Mexico,” says Shani Orona, a New Mexico-based location manager, in comments to KFTV.
“Our biggest competitor has not been Los Angeles – they do primarily TV now – but Georgia. We now have a much better ability to compete with them. Because we have such close proximity to Los Angeles – [it’s] a two-hour flight so producers and actors can fly home for the weekend.”
Action star and producer Dwayne Johnson has been the latest high-profile visitor to the state, shooting scenes for a follow-up to the hit 2017 family adventure movie Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. The film, directed by Jake Kasdan, shot on Navajo Nation lands in north-west New Mexico, hiring around a hundred local crew. See more at KFTV .
