The Orange County Commission will vote Tuesday on a five-year, $5 million-per-year film and TV incentive program.
The incentives would be paid for from the Tourist Development Tax.
A year and a half ago, the commission created a nine-member task force to develop the film incentive program and bring more movies, television shows and commercials to Orange County.
Roseann Harrington, the mayor's chief of staff, led the effort. She said it's geared toward small to medium-size film projects -- "maybe an independent film, something on a streaming service.
"And we're hoping to bring like a number of productions, as opposed to one big one, although we wouldn't turn it away. And mini series would be great, something under $25 million," she added, "because our base, our cap of our incentive, is a million dollars."
The film or television project would have to spend at least $400,000 in the county and would receive a rebate of 20%, according to a county presentation to the Tourist Development Council. The program also has rebates for high-end TV commercials at 10% with a $50,000 cap.
Six other Florida counties have similar incentive programs, according to the presentation. They include Broward County with incentives of $12 million a year and Miami-Dade County with $10 million a year and a $50 million commitment, as well as Palm Beach, Pinellas, Hillsborough and Duval counties.
“If Pinellas County can get a Hallmark movie,” Harrington said, “I think we can, too.”.
Beyond the theme parks
The use TDT funding means the Orange County incentives will have to promote tourism. That includes hotel stays for the out-of-town production crews.
"That's one of our return on investment criteria," Harrington said, "and then the other is you have to showcase our community, some of the locations, as a desirable place to come and visit."
She hopes that people seeing the films will want to visit -- not just the theme parks -- but the other half of Orange County, the rural areas with lakes, streams and tree canopies.
"The West Orange trail, For Christmas, Apopka, downtown Winter Garden, Winter Park," Harrington said. "There's all kinds of great things here that maybe somebody will see that and say, 'You know what? I might add a day or two onto my trip, because I want to do some of these other things, because I saw it in a movie.'"
The incentives also aim to boost the local economy and encourage local hires, including students and graduates from the county's six film programs, like Full Sail University and the University of Central Florida's film school.
Next steps
If the incentive program is approved by the County Commission Tuesday, the county plans to move quickly to hire an administrator.
That administrator, working for the county, would manage the TDT incentives and coordinate with the Orlando Economic Partnership's film office.
The OEP covers Osceola and Seminole counties, as well, but the incentives have to be managed separately and can only apply to expenditures in Orange County.
The applications would open up in January, with the first grants by the second quarter of next year. Harrington told the TDT council they'd aim for three application cycles in a year.
Harrington said the county won’t offer the program, it’s “going to go out and market this.”
