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Frank Capra Jr., president of Screen Gems and son of the late director Frank Capra, says the incentives have already generated new interest from studios. "All of a sudden we started hearing from the major studios about their projects," he says. In fact, he says some producers have recently discussed pushing back their schedules in order to wait for space to open at Screen Gems.

Capra has been at the studio for more than 20 years. He came to Wilmington to partner with Dino De Laurentiis, the Italian producer who made Federico Fellini's classics La Strada and Nights of Cabiria, then made the coastal Carolina city home to his own film studios, effectively creating the state's film industry out of thin air. The walls of Capra's office are lined with photographs of actors and directors he's known in his many years as a producer and studio executive.

Having spent most of his career in Hollywood, Capra is proud of what he's built in Wilmington. "We're like an L.A. lot, but not like an L.A. lot," he says. "The L.A. lots are very nickel and dime, you pay for every little thing. They come and move a picture on the wall, you get charged for that. We want to have really good service, take good care of our clients. It's not fancy, as you can see. It's professional but workaday, which is good because producers don't expect to pay L.A. prices." In Hollywood, it's all about the bottom line.

The incentives originally passed the General Assembly in 2005, but a provision requiring certain accounting practices meant the big studios were really collecting only 8 percent. Last year, the "add-back" provision was removed, and the full 15 percent incentive is now available to all comers. Without that revision, Capra says, "we would have been out of the ballgame."

Even at 15 percent, North Carolina's incentives aren't as competitive as those in other states, which range from 20 to 30 percent. And while North Carolina is blessed with geographical variety that can provide many types of locations, they might be found just as easily in South Carolina or Louisiana or New England. But Capra says our state has two major things the others don't: several professional movie lots and an experienced crew base of approximately 2,000 people statewide. The fewer people who have to be brought in from California, the cheaper the production. "When you look at the comparative budgets, we look real good at 15 percent, because if you're honest about the actual costs, we have the infrastructure here that other states don't have. We often are the least expensive place."

For 26 years, Bill Arnold was the state's film director, a position within the Department of Commerce's Tourism, Film and Sports Development division. Arnold's job was to recruit film business to the state and serve as liaison between Hollywood, N.C. filmmaking businesses, regional film offices and state government.

After a six-month search, the state has hired Aaron Lee Syrett, director of the Utah Film Commission, who will move to Raleigh in April. "I'm super excited," Syrett says. "It's one of those states where I think film commissioners aspire to be." He has lived most of his life in Utah, but he also has a variety of experience in the film industry. He worked as a child actor, landing a role in the 1995 independent family film Friendship's Field. "I did OK at it," he says of acting. "It was really fun, and it helped pay for college." After graduating from the University of Utah, he moved to Los Angeles and worked at the French film and television distributor Canal+, reading scripts and helping with contracts, among other duties. He moved back to Utah to produce crime prevention videos for the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Department, then studied to be a film producer before joining the film commission more than eight years ago. He says he's attended the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, for 15 years and has been a major sponsor for eight.

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"It's a great state," Syrett says of North Carolina. "They have a deep infrastructure, and that's one of the things that really excite me." He says the incentive package "just shows me the state's commitment to this industry."

That film is part of the Commerce Department instead of the Division of Cultural Resources demonstrates that film matters -- it's big business, having brought more than $7 billion to the state since 1980, according to the N.C. Film Office. But now, other states want a piece of the action.

Is the state prepared to do what it takes to stay in the game? And what about that crew, the state's major asset? For the past several years, most of Wilmington's electricians, gaffers, production managers and set artists were forced to look elsewhere for work. Some worked part of the year in L.A. or New York, or in nearby states like Louisiana and South Carolina.