“Gone Girl” stars Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in the story of a wife who disappears and the reaction of a town and the media to it.
Representative Kathryn Swan (courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Tax credits that helped bring production of that film to Missouri have also disappeared, and Representative Kathy Swan, R-Cape Girardeau, wants to bring them back.
The Motion Picture Association of America reports “Gone Girl” contributed more than $7-million to Missouri’s economy, hiring 116 Missourians and using 1,400 extras. The film was shot primarily in Cape Girardeau over about two months.
Swan thinks renewing the state’s film production tax credit would help bring more film industry dollars to the state.
“There was a sunset on that film tax credit and that’s why I had filed a bill to extend that, and I will do that again,” Swan tells Missourinet.
The maker of “Gone Girl.” 20th Century Fox, was able to take advantage of that program before it expired and received nearly 900-thousand dollars in tax credits.
Swan knows tax credits, in general, face stiff opposition. Her fellow lawmaker from Cape Girardeau, Senator Wayne Wallingford, told the Southeast Missourian he doesn’t believe the state gets enough in return for tax credits issued under that program.
Swan hopes the benefit of “Gone Girl” to the Cape and the state will help her cause.
“I think we need to look at the benefit that each [tax credit] does provide the state and make a determination as a legislature on the future of them individually, not as a whole.”
She tells Missourinet that she and other supporters of that credit know that not every film that shoots in Missouri will be a “Gone Girl.”
“However, we do want to be in the market for other, smaller productions, and we can very easily do that with a competitive package,” says Swan. “We’ve done some research comparing what Missouri’s program is compared to some of the other states and we worked through a conference committee substitute bill that … sort of hits the middle road on some of the different specifics of the tax credit.”
Swan expects to offer legislation that would extend that tax credit in the new session that begins in January.
She got to see “Gone Girl” in an advance screening last night in Cape Girardeau. That film opens in theaters nationwide, today.
