A motion picture company hopes to make Ohio a filmmaking destination with a building it's renovating into a film studio in Dublin.
Fallback Studios, a film production company, has agreed to purchase a 250,000 square foot building on a 15 acre campus with five stages, a 4k theater, post production studios, an LED volume wall for virtual production, a full-service production company, podcast spaces and more, according to a Fallback news release. This would be the largest production facility in Ohio.
The facility, which Fallback has a purchase agreement for October, is at 7007 Discovery Boulevard. It is the current headquarters of WD Partners, a retail consulting and architecture company, that will continue to lease part of the building.
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It will support the creation of feature films, independent films, live audience shows, music videos, documentaries, podcasts and other kinds of projects. The facility will be used by Fallback for their own productions or can be leased out to companies working on other projects.
Fallback Studios estimates it will spend $20 million to renovate the existing building.
Kevin Kale, CEO and chairman of Fallback, said the studio plans to open phase one of the facility in the second quarter of 2025. He said the first phase includes parts that do not require much construction like the podcast studios, post-production spaces, educational suites in collaboration with local universities and the theater.
"The expectation is as we move into and go through 2025, that you'll see several projects that will either come out of the facility or that the production company is investing in," Kale said.
Economic impact
Kale said the facility project aims to create jobs, grow the Ohio film industry and keep Ohio film and production students in the state rather than working on the coasts that have large film industries.
Fallback itself said it will hire 21 employees in a year and 49 by 2031.
Kale said that Ohio's film industry is worth about $300 million and the goal is to grow it to it to $3 billion in the next five years. He said the two things that can make that happen are infrastructure and support from the state and local government in the form of incentives that have grown other state's film industries, like Georgia.
It partnered with Film Columbus, a non-profit focused on growing the Ohio film industry, to discuss these topics. John Daugherty, director of Film Columbus, said one of the problems with projects being filmed in Ohio is productions will arrive with their own crews — only hiring a few people from Ohio — and leave when they wrap, not giving much to Ohio workers.
He said building up an Ohio crew base is a chicken and the egg problem. Few projects coming to Ohio means fewer Ohio workers with production experience and few workers with production experience makes coming to Ohio less attractive.
Having a center people can work at can help build that crew base, he said.
Dublin council supports the project
At Dublin City Council's July 1 meeting, it approved a $240,000 incentive package to help Fallback's project. It has a seven-year 18% performance incentive on withholdings totaling up to $120,000, a $60,000 solar installation grant and up to $60,000 for the Dublink fiber lateral grant, according to a Dublin news release.
Kale said Fallback was considering many places but a large reason it decided on Dublin was because of local government support.
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Dublin said these building improvements align with its goals of sustainability and digital connectivity.
"We’re very excited by the many opportunities Fallback Studios will bring to Dublin," Economic Development Administrator Kirby Dearth said in an emailed statement. "They’ll be able to well position the City in the global production industry and attract a host of partnered companies to Dublin. This will have a significant positive impact on our local economy, including new jobs, travel and tourism and our many amenities.”
It's all about the tax incentives
Daugherty, who has lobbied to increase Ohio's film tax incentive, said one of the key elements to growing a state's film industry is how large its film tax credit is. Film projects in Ohio can apply for the Ohio Motion Picture Tax Credit that gives a 30% refund on production cast, crew wages and other in-state spending, according to the Ohio Department of Development.
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Ohio started its tax credit with a maximum amount of $20 million a year in 2009 and it has since grown to $50 million. Georgia, for example, has grown one of the largest film industries in America with large studios in Atlanta and an uncapped tax credit.
Fallback's facility project was supported by a new infrastructure tax incentive for film facilities. If infrastructure incentives are unused, the tax motion picture credit will get the money meaning at its largest it could be $75 million a year.
Kale said creating the infrastructure with this large project will hopefully convince lawmakers to increase the credit and incentivize more projects in the state.
"The strategy is, hey, if legislators see that somebody's planting a flag right here in Ohio and they're creating an atmosphere where people want to move here, people want to stay here that are graduating ... Then the legislators are most likely going to look at that and say 'ok, we can incentivize this a little more," Daugherty said.
DHunt@dispatch.com
