An entertainment company’s decision to locate in Alabama is an indicator that more show business jobs may be headed here, state officials said.
Entertainment Partners deals exclusively with the motion picture and television industry, state Tourism and Travel Bureau Director Lee Sentell said. The company and its subsidiary, EPPS Purchasing Inc., expect to open an Alabama office this month, said Sentell, who also oversees the Alabama Film Office.
One possible site for the small company is Birmingham, he said.
While the company’s size is small, Sentell said — the Alabama office will employ fewer than 10 people — the entertainment enterprises the company serves are not.
“They usually locate in competitive areas and in hot states as far as entertainment incentives go,” Sentell said.
Entertainment Partners official Marco Cordova said the decision to locate in Alabama was based on several productions being shot in the state during the next six months and the state’s economic incentives for movie productions. Entertainment Partners itself doesn’t qualify for the incentives. North Alabama legislators, including former Sens. Tom Butler, D-Madison, and Bobby Denton, D-Muscle Shoals, pushed the entertainment incentives legislation through the Legislature.
The 30-year-old company’s decision to open an office in Alabama is not the result of a recruiting effort on the state’s part, but it is a positive step for attracting entertainment productions, Sentell said.
“They will actively recruit productions for us,” he said.
Alabama Film Office Director Kathy Faulk credits the 2007 incentives law with reigniting movie and TV interest in Alabama. A 2011 revision to the 2007 law allows entertainment companies to count multiple shoots and other production steps in a TV series or movie, during a one-year period as one way to meet the minimum requirements to qualify for incentives.
http://www.timesdaily.com/stories/Alabama-home-for-TV-film-industry-,182768
