Moon River Studios Inc. CEO Jake Shapiro told members of the Effingham County Rotary Club on Thursday that Georgia is “business friendly.”
Shapiro said five states were vying for the “studioplex” project planned on 1,600 acres owned by the Industrial Development Authority on Old River Road at Interstate 16.
He said he and other company officials toured a site on the Hudson River in New York state. After $7 million in zoning and legal work, the property owners were proud that a referendum on a possible project at the site would come up in “only” another 19 months.
When they came to Effingham County, he said, the head of the zoning commission met them at the property. They asked how long before a project could be approved, and the answer was six to seven weeks.
“But we can work harder and faster if you need us to,” he quoted officials as saying.
“Georgia is so business friendly compared to the rest of the country,” Shapiro said.
He said Georgia is No. 1 in the country in growth in film production, with $3.3 billion generated last year and movies such as “Hunger Games” and “Anchorman” filming in the state.
“It’s a pro-business climate we really appreciate because we’ve seen the other side of it as well,” he said.
Shapiro said Hollywood and the movie industry are broken. He quoted Orson Welles as saying 95 percent of his life was spent raising money for movies and five percent was spent making movies.
“What a miserable existence,” he quoted Welles as saying. “Nothing has changed since then.”
New records for the cost of movies are constantly being broken.
“We’re in an industry where every day, every week, every year, the revenue side continues to go up,” he said.
Films such as “The Lone Ranger” cost $350 million to make, and that’s a movie about two guys and two horses, he said.
Moon River plans to save 40 percent of production costs by hiring full-time staff and using its own equipment and re-using sets, much like Hollywood used to do when it made Western after Western.
If a film is made for $6 million, $3 million would come back in state incentives and $3 million might be made in foreign sales, he said. Then, “any dollar that comes in domestically is pre-tax profit.”
He said the working title of the business plan for the company was “Project Model T.”
“We’re automating the film industry,” he said. “We’re going to do to Hollywood what Henry Ford did to the automobile industry.”
For every dollar spent on film production, up to $5 is returned to the community in a “massive multiplier effect,” he said.
The new management team of the company that started work this summer has “tight focus and clear direction,” he said. Shapiro took over after founder Manu Kumaran was ousted in a hostile takeover.
Lawsuits regarding the takeover and shareholder complaints are pending in District Court and in Nevada, where the company was incorporated.
Shapiro said he hopes to have approval for the development of regional impact by mid-November and to begin building sound stages in mid-January.
He said the company, formerly known as “Medient,” soon will announce what films it will be producing. He said the new management team has delivered on all the promises it has made.
“We absolutely will continue to do that,” he said. “That’s the way I was raised. … We’re actually very proud of that.”