Wilmington, North Carolina doesn’t look like a film capital. From its charming riverfront to island beaches to historic mansions and cozy suburban homes, the community of fewer than 100,000 people looks like an idyllic all-American town, innocent and safe.

Which may be exactly why it became such a film capital.

Filmmakers love to juxtapose its cheery exteriors with scary stories, from David Lynch’s 1986 Blue Velvet to 1997’s I Know What You Did Last Summer to 2019’s Halloween Kills to 2020’s The Black Phone and Scream. Its tranquility provides a perfect counterpoint to fictional menace.

Of course, its photogenic architecture and natural beauty also lend themselves to non-scary stories, especially comedies and romances. The region’s 31 miles of shoreline lend themselves to coming-of-age shows like Dawson’s Creek, as well as recent streaming hits like Outer Banks and The Summer I Turned Pretty.

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Last year, Wilmington ranked No. 9 in the U.S. Census Bureau’s list of the fastest-growing cities in the country. It also regularly turns up on our annual list of the Best Places to Live and Work as a MovieMaker.

It all started with Firestarter, 40 years ago, a time when Stephen King movies — and Drew Barrymore — were relatively recent phenomena.

The film, based on King’s 1980 novel of the same name, was directed by Mark L. Lester and stars a young Barrymore as Charlie McGee, an 8-year-old girl with power over fire because of experiments conducted on her parents (David Keith and Heather Locklear) when they were college students.

It was produced by the Dino De Laurentiis Company — and De Laurentiis proved to be hugely important for Wilmington’s rise.

Wilmington and Dino De Laurentiis

Isabella Rosellini in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. De Laurentiis Entertainment Group.

De Laurentiis, an accomplished Italian-American producer whose hits include Serpico, Death Wish, and the 1976 King Kong remake, learned about Wilmington from a magazine. He saw a property, Orton Plantation, in Southern Accents magazine, and thought it could be an ideal location for the evil government agency pursuing young Charlie in Firestarter.

De Laurentiis, along with producer Frank Capra Jr. and associate producer (and Laurentiis’ soon-to-be wife) Martha Schumacher, decided to scout the location — and were so taken with the region that it soon became the home not only of Firestarter but of many other De Laurentiis productions.

Soon after Firestarter, the Dino De Laurentiis Company made Cat’s Eye, another Wilmington-based Stephen King adaptation starring Drew Barrymore. But the company’s most beloved Wilmington-based film may be the Lynch’s cult classic Blue Velvet.

De Laurentiis also built the studio complex now known as  Cinespace, the cornerstone of Wilmington’s film industry.

Why People and Films Move to Wilmington

Guy Gaster, director of the North Carolina Film Office.

“There’s definitely something about the quality of life,” says North Carolina Film Office director Guy Gaster. “And those reasons are the same ones that 40 years ago Dino fell in love with when he decided to build this mini-empire for himself — it was the charming downtown area, being on the coast, the very friendly climate. All of those things that read on the screen were the exact reasons why, after he found this location for Firestarter, he said, ‘Why am I not making more here?” And that’s something that we continue to see now.”

In addition to Cinespace, Wilmington will soon welcome Dark Horse Stages, which will give the town 15 sound stages in all. Wilmington Regional Film Commission director Johnny Griffin notes that both facilities offer full support spaces — including offices, mills, storage, and wardrobe — and a full compliment of lighting and grip equipment.

Other draws for recent productions include North Carolina’s 25% rebate on qualifying expenses and purchases made by productions in-state, funded through the North Carolina Film and Entertainment Grant. It offers at least $31 million per fiscal year, with any unused funds carrying over to the next year.

But Griffin notes that Wilmington has endured for so many years because its success wasn’t built solely on incentives. The film scene built up organically, with crew members who started on Firestarter and other ’80s productions staying in town and encouraging their children to learn their skills.

Other film hubs across the country have gone in and out of fashion as state incentives have come and gone, but Wilmington has endured through good times and bad because film has become part of the local culture.

“Since the industry has been here for 40 years, it has become a part of the fabric of the community.  It is embraced by the community and everyone knows someone who works in the industry or a company that supports it,” Griffin told MovieMaker.

The Duntons are an example of a film family that has passed down knowledge through generations: British-born Joe Dunton, a camera expert whose credits include Eyes Wide Shut, has operated Wilmington’s Dunton Cine USA with his son Lester Dunton for years. The business has has supplied cameras to films from The Shawshank Redemption to The Notebook.

And Erica Dunton, daughter to Joe and sister of Lester, is an in-demand director whose credits include Ted Lasso.

Setbacks

Shooting a scene from Greedy People at the Southport State Ferry Terminal near Wilmington. Courtesy of the North Carolina Film Office.

But Wilmington has had ups and downs with the film industry.

One setback came in 2015, when the Republican majority of the state’s General Assembly replaced the tax credit program with the North Carolina Film and Entertainment Grant, which reduced financial incentives and added restrictions.

Before the rollback, the state had attracted big-budget projects like Iron Man 3. But the year of the rollback, film spending in North Carolina fell to $35 million, down from $264 million in 2014.

Another setback for film in the region was the state’s 2016 “bathroom bill,” House Bill 2, the first law in the nation to require people to use the bathroom that matched the sex on their birth certificate. The blowback was immediate: Businesses including PayPal and the NCAA pulled back on plans in the state, and performers from Bruce Springsteen to Cirque de Soleil canceled planned performances.

Many films took their business to other states. The Associated Press estimated the state could lose $3.76 billion in business over 12 years.

In 2017, the state rolled back the bill. North Carolina voters also welcomed a new governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, who was more enthusiastic about film production.

“I remember when I got elected governor that the film business had pretty much dried up,” Cooper said last year. “We had passed the dumb House Bill 2 and we had messed with the incentives program to really hurt it. And we had a lot of working families in the film industry living right here in Wilmington who were driving down to Georgia to get work.”

The incentives have since increased. But the film and TV industry in North Carolina, and just about everywhere else, took hits because of Covid shutdowns and then the actor and writer strikes of last year.

Rebound

A scene from Greedy People shot at the Fort Fisher State Recreational Area. Courtesy of the North Carolina Film Office.

Wilmington has had some of its greatest success with mid-budget films that shoot outside of Los Angeles, Atlanta, and other blockbuster-budget hubs.

One such film is the recent Greedy People, a small-town caper starring Himesh Patel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lily James that came out in August. It shot in locations including the Fort Fisher State Recreational Area, a gorgeous state park about half an hour from downtown Wilmington, and the nearby Southport State Ferry Terminal.

And while Wilmington has never sought out horror, it has come to accept that those are exactly the kinds of movies that tend to be made in the mid-budget range.

One of the Wilmington’s best places for finding and discovering new talent is the Cucalorus film festival, which dispenses with awards and monetary prizes to focus solely on art and collegiality. Cucalorians, as he calls festival veterans, have a good joke about all the horror shoots locally.

“An old school Cucalorian named Craig Rogers always says that the water plant called to say that everything was coming in red, because of all the fake blood they were using and flushing down the drains,” says Dan Brawley, the festival’s (yes, actual title) instigator in chief.

He notes that the talent that has emerged from North Carolina is bringing more projects back home, including University of North Carolina School of the Arts alum David Gordon Green, who directed all three of the newest Halloween films, and Outer Banks co-creator Jonas Pate, who shot his Sundance indie The Grave in Wilmington three decades ago.

“Call it what you want — a second wave or maybe a rebirth,” says Brawley. “But there is definitely growing energy and a sense that there are good days ahead for film in Wilmington and North Carolina.”

Main image: Drew Barrymore in Firestarter. MGM.