Charts and statistics showing the location of movie production reveals what the Peach State would lose from a boycott of filming due to ‚heartbeat bill‘.
The so-called ‚fetal heartbeat bill‘ is a ban on abortion after more than six weeks of pregnancy, and is based on bad science that essentially defines ‚heartbeat‘ as electrical activity from a few embryonic cells. The new legislation will come into force in 2020 unless it’s overturned in court.
Georgia has become known as ‚the Hollywood of the South‘ in no small part thanks to generous tax breaks that attract filmmakers. But as Disney CEO Bob Iger has said, it will be „very difficult“ to keep filming in Georgia if the abortion ban takes effect because many people won’t want to work there. Disney owns the lucrative Star Wars and Marvel franchises (Avengers: Endgame alone, which was filmed in Georgia, has so far grossed $2.7 billion worldwide). An anti-abortion law would cost Georgia a lot of money.
One way to predict what Georgia will stand to lose from the film industry is to compare the state against competing locations, which we can achieve using data from FilmLA, the official film office of the Greater Los Angeles region. Since 2013, FilmLA Research has tracked the number of top 100 feature films released in US theatres made by American companies, along with where those movies were produced, which includes 11 countries and 14 US states.
Although successful films are often called ‚Hollywood blockbusters‘, many are actually made elsewhere. According to FilmLA Research, six places — California, Canada, Georgia, New York, Louisiana and the United Kingdom — „have traded spots for the top five filming locations each year.“
Number of top 100 movies produced by US companies over time
The number of top 100 movies produced at each location can be seen in the bar chart above, which groups the results by year: in 2013,California and Canada tied for first place; in 2014,California was far in front of the competition; in 2015, the locations evened-out with the UK just ahead; in 2016, Georgia came out on top; and in 2017, Canada hosted the most blockbusters.
As you can see from the stacked area chart below, from 2013-2017 the six places accounted for around two-thirds of the top 100 films. But are the six locations singled-out by FilmLA really a distinct group? To answer that question, we can use statistics to test whether the six locations have, on average, produced the same number of movies over time. An analysis of variance shows a difference in mean that’s just about statistically significant (one-way ANOVA, P = 0.0222).
Number of top 100 movies produced by US companies over time
But the stacked area chart also suggests that two locations, Louisiana and New York, produce fewer films (means of 8.
