Officials, business leaders and filmmakers traveled to Madisonville on Wednesday to tout a new initiative to get the Bluegrass State on the world’s silver and small screens: the West Kentucky Film Commission.
The effort is geared toward bringing the entertainment business to its member cities and counties, including Bowling Green, Oak Grove, Franklin, Central City, Henderson, Owensboro and Paducah.
Co-commissioner Jeremy Winton said the effort, which is a collaboration between local governments in Western Kentucky, isn’t “just selling scenic views,” but offering community support, talent and access.
“It’s a united front. All these cities and counties have come together with one goal, and that’s to bring film, television and media production to our region, and to build a sustainable, creative economy right here at home that all the cities that are included in,” said Winton, a Hopkins County native and practicing attorney who’s founded multiple film related ventures.
Winton and his co-commissioner Kristi Kilday said, through the Kentucky Entertainment Incentive program and initiatives like the film commission, Western Kentucky can be competitive with major filming locations like Atlanta and New Orleans.
“But we offer something they don’t — authentic stories, real American landscapes and a workforce that is as tough as they are talented,” Winton said.
The KEI program, Kilday explained, subsidizes productions, allowing “Hollywood producers that send anyone from New York or Los Angeles or Atlanta to come here, make a movie and make between 30 and 35 cents for every dollar that they spend.”
“So when that production comes here, they are pouring money in from the production itself, but they’re also spending money locally, too. With the crew that is staying here, like they’re filling up their gas tanks, they’re staying in hotels,” Kilday said. “It is a ripple effect.”
In recent years, the KEI program has helped to attract productions like Ethan Hawke’s “Wildcat,” a biopic about the eccentric southern novelist Flannery O’Conner, and “Red Right Hand,” an Appalachia-set thriller starring Orlando Bloom and Andie MacDowell.
To lure more productions to Kentucky, the state Legislature passed a bill to effectively reestablish the state film office this spring.
The state paused the KEI program in April after nearly hitting its legislatively mandated $75 million annual cap for the first time since its inception.
“The growth of the Kentucky Entertainment Incentive is due in large part to great collaboration from all the local film commissions and those passionate about growing this industry in Kentucky,” Economic Development Secretary Jeff Noel told the Lexington Herald-Leader in a statement at the time.
Touting Kentucky’s economic momentum, Gov. Andy Beshear said during the event Wednesday that the state has invested more than $230 million to support productions since 2022, which helped create 22,000 jobs.
Beshear praised the commission during the event, saying the success of statewide initiatives, the establishment of new film ventures like the newly opened Kentucky Sound Stage in Owensboro and the $70 million planned soundstage in Louisville, program expansions to develop a skilled entertainment workforce at Kentucky Wesleyan College and collaborations like this between communities signal that “the commonwealth is ready for our close-up.”
“The West Kentucky Film Commission will be a magnet for creative people and creative work, bringing even more good folks to our new Kentucky home, making your communities their new Kentucky home and showing off our new Kentucky home in film after film after film,” he said.
The governor also noted that the development of a robust entertainment industry in the state would allow young Kentuckians to pursue their big screen aspirations close to home.
“This will be one of the first times in our life where we can truly say a child growing up in west Kentucky can dream about being in the movies, can dream about making the movies, can dream about directing the movies, or to be a part of any aspect of that production,” Beshear said.
Filmmaker and actress Michelle Gonzalez co-wrote and starred in “Playing For Mozart” and “A Christmas Pitch” – two feature films produced in Madisonville over the past year. The trailer for the latter premiered at the beginning of the event.
“We didn’t just make a movie. No, we created jobs, we supported local businesses, and we planted the seeds for a thriving creative economy,” Gonzalez said. “We’re excited to build so much more and, even though the cameras might stop rolling when we say, ‘That’s a wrap,’ we know that the impact that we create is going to go far beyond the final scene.”
Madisonville Mayor Kevin Cotton said he’s excited by the prospects of more productions coming to this neck of the woods, and to neighboring cities.
“This is an opportunity that we have that we can showcase all of Western Kentucky west of I-65, because sometimes we may be forgotten about on this side of the state, but not anymore,” he said.
The commission’s plans for the immediate future include launching a rotating film festival between its member cities and marketing the region directly to the film industry at events like the annual American Film Market in Los Angeles.
Beshear said that Kentucky and its residents are naturally suited to the medium, and that the state’s place in the entertainment industry can only grow from here.
“I think it’s our strong sense of place and our pride. There’s an authenticity to us, to Kentuckians. It shines through when we relate to others,” he said. “When I think about film, I think about storytellers, and there’s something about the story of Kentuckians that people across the country and across the world can relate to.”
This article is republished with permission from WKMS. Read the original.
