Utah’s recently sweetened incentives for movie production are bearing fruit in the form of new development.  Woodbury Corp. and Redman Movies and Stories plan to start construction early next year on a $40 million studio production in South Salt Lake. The joint venture will redevelop the 105-year-old Granite High School campus as a 90,000-square-foot complex of sound stages, office and retail space, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

The project marks a win for efforts to lure more movie shoots to the state that served as a backdrop for such classics as The Searchers, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Planet of the Apes and Rio Grande. In response to a falloff in film production, state officials took steps last year to get a bigger share of Hollywood’s business.

Taking a cue from Louisiana, which attracted more movie production after raising tis rebate, Gov. Gary Herbert, signed legisation that increases Utah’s motion picture incentive from 20 percent to 25 percent. That brought Utah on a par with New Mexico, which has successfully competed for films that require a distinctively Western setting like like the Coen brothers’ remake of True Grit and the Walt Disney Co.’s John Carter. 

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