![]() They are simply a vessel to make it easier for makers of TV and film to get the 30% tax credit.Ĭhris Cooney, CEO of EUE/Screen Gems, hired the affable Atlanta native Bagwell ― a former MTV Networks executive who actually helped get MTV signed onto a cable network in Atlanta in 1986 ― to run the operation. Cooney noted that his company receives zero tax credit money. “There is nothing else like it in Atlanta,” Reitz noted.ĮUE/Screen Gems in 2010 signed a 50-year lease with the City of Atlanta. It also didn’t hurt that the buildings evoked the classic soundstages of Los Angeles. The Cooneys like its close proximity to both downtown Atlanta and Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Despite its dilapidated state, Lakewood stood out. ![]() He said he showed them about 20 locations. They used real estate broker John Raulet in part because he had brokered Tyler Perry’s first studio space off Krog Street. For four years, the buildings largely lay empty, becoming a magnet for vandals, gangs and homeless people.Įnter the Cooneys, who for decades ran studios that were home to the soap opera “Guiding Light,” the WB show “Dawson’s Creek” and Marvel film “Iron Man 3.” After Georgia amped up its tax credits in 2008, executives spent 10 months searching for space in metro Atlanta. That never came to pass, so Spivia pivoted, turning it into a popular antique market until 2006. Former Georgia film commissioner Ed Spivia’s Filmworks USA in the early 1980s signed a longterm lease in hopes of turning Lakewood into a first-rate movie studio. Burt Reynolds, for his film “Smokey and the Bandit II,” famously blew up the Greyhound. They also built a dirt race track, an amphitheater, a Carnival Midway and a big roller coaster dubbed the Greyhound.īy the 1970s, the fair had lost its appeal and shut down. Lakewood opened in 1916 as an agricultural fair with supporters raising money to erect Spanish Mission-style exhibition halls. Thanks to an insatiable demand for TV and film content coming out of the pandemic, business is booming.ĮUE/Screen Gems, now with 10 soundstages and plans to build more, is currently working with Netflix to shoot the second season of “Raising Dion” and the fourth season of “Stranger Things,” which alone employs around 500 people. ![]() Georgia today has 100-plus soundstages, more than any state except California. They had the background and the connections to make it happen and gave us a template for what would follow.” “Screen Gems showed us how to do space as it ought to be done,” said Ric Reitz, an actor who helped design the tax credits in 2008. EUE Screen Gems’ success helped open the door for other entrepreneurs to enter the field, including Eagle Rock Studios in Norcross and Stone Mountain, Atlanta Metro Studios in Union City and Pinewood Studios in Fayetteville ( now Trilith). ![]() While dreamers have attempted many projects that never quite panned out at Lakewood in the past, this particular effort worked out even better than the owners expected. ![]()
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