ATLANTA — Chris Ratledge used to make as much as $9,500 a week working on film sets around Atlanta. Now, he’s on food stamps.
The 48-year-old digital imaging technician moved from Indiana to Georgia in 2017 as studios — lured by generous tax credits — turned Atlanta into the “Hollywood of the South,” the backdrop for hundreds of productions like “The Hunger Games,” “Stranger Things” and more than a dozen Marvel blockbusters.
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Ratledge said the work was grueling — 70-hour weeks were normal — but the $72-an-hour pay was transformative. “I paid off three years of back taxes in one year, just from the money I made,” says Ratledge, who worked on the Netflix movie “Red Notice,” as well as shows like TBS’ “Miracle Workers” and Starz’s “P-Valley.”
Those times are long gone: Ratledge has worked just four days on set since May 2024.
Instead, he’s been working part-time at the front desk of a local tennis center and stringing rackets on the side, trying somehow to support his family of five on $15 an hour without health insurance. His wife, a cancer survivor, has started cleaning houses a few days a week, and they’ve downsized their rental home. But their $2,000-a-month income hardly even covers their rent, a shortfall that has left Ratledge in debt and deeply depressed.
“All I want for Christmas is for my film career back,” Ratledge wrote on Instagram in December.
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Georgia’s boom goes bust
After hitting a peak of $4.4 billion in 2022, spending on film and TV production in Georgia has tumbled, reaching just $2.3 billion in the last fiscal year, as total productions dropped from 412 in 2022 to 245 last year. The decline accelerated after the 2023 writers and actors strikes halted productions for months, dealing a blow to an industry still recovering from COVID-19 shutdowns.
“We saw a lot of productions start looking overseas, knowing that they wouldn’t have another work stoppage,” said Lee Thomas, the deputy commissioner of the Georgia Film Office. “We knew that it would be like a reset to the industry ... but it certainly was a bigger, harder fall than we anticipated — and longer.”
Marvel has left Georgia’s market — its last movie filmed there was 2025’s “Thunderbolts” — and shifted its massive productions to the United Kingdom, where labor and production costs are cheaper. Streamers like Netflix are also increasingly filming abroad, while producing fewer shows in general. Other states, including California and Texas, have upped incentives to compete with Georgia’s tax credits, which can cover up to 30% of production costs.
Local industry Facebook groups are filled with complaints about a lack of work, with some people griping about well-established veterans taking up the few jobs available, said Monique Younger, an Atlanta costume supervisor. Younger says her work is less than half what it once was, making her “feel a little bit useless.”
Jen Farris, an Atlanta native and longtime location scout, said she used to reject offers because she had too much work. Now, she’s navigating two- or three-month gaps in between projects, forcing her to “watch her pennies.”
“You just pray that you have nested away enough to float a little bit,” she said.
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