Dino De Lurentiisstarted North Carolina’s film industry without the tax credits. North Carolina film did not start giving tax credits until 20 years after De Laurentiis made his first movie in Wilmington. Somehow North Carolina’s film industry started and thrived without them.
More than anyone else, De Laurentiis was responsible for jump-starting the modern era of movie production in North Carolina. His Dino De Laurentiis Company came to the Chimney Rock and Wilmington areas to shoot a version of Stephen King’s novel “Firestarter” in 1983.
He opened a studio in Wilmington the following year, attracted by various advantages: good weather, locations that could double for other parts of the world and especially right-to-work laws that made non-union productions possible. He sold the studio four years later, and the movies he made there (such as “Silver Bullet” and “Year of the Dragon”) were rarely acclaimed by audiences or critics. But he started a filmmaking boom that briefly made North Carolina the third-busiest state in America, behind California and New York.
