ATLANTA — More than 4,000 theaters across the country are now playing the final "Hunger Games" movie, "Mockingjay Part 2," and Georgia has a starring role.
Three out of the four movies in the series were filmed in the state, which has led to a big boost in tourism. The historic Swan House in Buckhead doubles as President Snow’s mansion in the film.
“We know we’ve had thousands of people come just because we’re President Snow’s mansion, and this is a big deal for us because this is a shift in our daily visitors,” Swan House manager Jessica VanLanduyt told Channel 2’s Erin Coleman. “We’re getting teenage girls, we’re getting fans of popular culture that weren’t necessarily fans of a historic house that now think this is a really cool place to be.”
Crews shot scenes for the movies all over the state, including at the old Pullman rail yard in northeast Atlanta, the rock quarry in northwest Atlanta and Sweetwater Creek State Park in Lithia Springs. Park officials say they’ve also seen a spike in visitors, helping to make it the most visited park in Georgia this year.
“It’s changed the whole level of the kinds of films we get in Georgia. We had never been able to have one of those huge tent pole shows and we got the first one, "Catching Fire," then the other two Mockingjays, and since then we’ve been host to the Marvel films, so it really has changed the level of films we’ve gotten here,” Lee Thomas, with the Georgia Film, Music and Digital Entertainment Office said.
Thomas says as a whole the film industry in Georgia is exploding.
“According to the Motion Picture Association of America, 77,900 Georgians are now directly or indirectly working in the film industry in Georgia. So that is a lot of people, that’s a lot of jobs, and there’s a lot of companies impacted as well,” Thomas said.
Georgia has now moved to No. 3 in the nation for television and film production in the state, behind Los Angeles and New York. In 2007, it had a $244 million economic impact on the state, by 2015, it was up to $6 billion.
“We’re getting a lot of great exposure, which has helped our bottom line, which helps us maintain the house. We can use this back for the preservation of the house,” VanLanduyt said.
WSBTV
