While Wilmington is the foundation of the North Carolina film industry, more productions are expanding their locations and filming throughout the state as the new tax incentive continues to prove its worth.
“Hick,” Derick Martini’s story of a Nebraska girl who sets out for Las Vegas, starring Alec Baldwin, Blake Lively and Chloe Moritz, filmed in Wilmington earlier this year. For a few key shots, however, “Hick” location manager Geoff Ryan looked to the Piedmont Triad.
“Because of scenes that required rolling hills and even mountainous regions, their location manager who I’ve worked with many years ago, reached out to me asking for very specific types of sites,” said Rebecca Clark, Executive Director of the Piedmont Triad Film Commission.
Clark, with help from location scout Randy Byers, hunted down everything from rural highways to retro hamburger stands. Locations used include Hanging Rock State Park, Highway 150 through Brown Summit and Highway 65 in Rockingham County, Budget Inn in Rockingham and Kearney’s, an old-fashioned hamburger stand in Lexington. It was “ideal and an almost exact double for the one the director had in mind,” said Clark.
According to Clark, filming went well, and she estimates that tens of thousands of dollars were spent in the Triad on securing locations, hiring local crew, permits and more.
“They filmed scenes here because they knew they could find all of the missing ingredients for their film all in the Piedmont Triad,” said Clark.
