In what is almost a follow up to our previous post on live-action series set location speculation, The Wall Street Journal has published a piece highlighting the fact that the live-action series seems to be drifting away from the Czech Republic as a set location due to a lack of tax incentives. Could Hungary be the alternative? Click here for the full piece and see below for an excerpt.
"Mr. Lucas has chosen the Czech Republic for smaller projects. The filmmaker and his executive producer, Rick McCallum, recently completed the filming of "Red Tails," a low-budget movie about African-American fighter pilots during World War II, in which locations in the Czech Republic doubled for Italy.
With a budget of $25 million, "Red Tails" was relatively inexpensive to make for Lucasfilm, Mr. Lucas's production company, and Mr. McCallum said the high skill level of Czech film crews overcame the lack of tax breaks.
But this likely won't be enough for the "Star Wars" television series, with a planned budget of $100 million to $150 million annually to shoot about 100 episodes over four years, Mr. McCallum said. "I had a wonderful experience on 'Red Tails,' but in order to bring a larger production to the Czech Republic, the government would need to be competitive with other countries' tax incentives," Mr. Lucas said."