ATLANTA — Outside The Tara Theatre in Northeast Atlanta Wednesday, there was a lot of drama.
“It has created a lot of pain and difficulty for a lot of folks on both sides of the camera,” Chris Escobar told Channel 2’s Berndt Petersen.
Escobar is the Executive Director of the Atlanta Film Festival, and owner of The Tara and Plaza Theatres—the festival’s host cinemas.
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Escobar said Georgia’s film industry is still trying to recover from a wild swing of high and lows.
It experienced a spending boom of $4.4 billion dollars in 2022, but then came one of the industry’s longest writers’ strikes.
By last year, film production spending in the state had dropped by half.
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Escobar told Channel 2 Action News that’s because half of all American films—many once made in Georgia—are now produced overseas.
“We still have one of the best incentives in the world here. The difference is we’re in a country that has no incentive at all,” Escobar said.
He said independent filmmakers—including those at this 50th Atlanta Film Festival---are optimistic.
The festival is one of the longest running in the nation and the screenings are expected to attract nearly 30,000 visitors.
Escobar said some of the movers and shakers who are in attendance predict that this year, the state’s film industry will experience a happy ending.
“I’m talking to producers. I’m talking to the studios. To a variety of people—who say 2026 is already much busier than ’25 or ’24 were,” Escobar said.
He says they predict film production spending in the Peach State could reach $3 billion dollars.
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