TV drama Six gets North Carolina incentive

Planned as an eight-part miniseries, Six will be based at EUE/Screen Gems Studios in Wilmington.

“The idea originally came to me when I read about Boko Haram kidnapping school children in Africa,” said Paul Buccieri, president of A+E Studios and cable channel History, when the project was first announced last month.

“I thought about how would our world react and it brought on the idea of creating a series about the world of SEAL Team Six because the story felt as poignant and timely as ever. Each year will feature a different theatre of war – the first starting in Africa.”

Six will receive filming incentive support of up to $7.2m to shoot in North Carolina, marginally below the state’s $9m per-season cap. The series is expected to spend around $30m locally.

The TV drama will be a boost for North Carolina’s production industry after a turbulent few years. Major features like the first Hunger Games movie and Iron Man 3 were shot in the state but last year the filming incentive programme was downgraded to a relatively minor grant system.

Since January 2015, state authorities have in fact tripled the size of the annual film fund to $30m. This broadens North Carolina’s appeal mainly to higher-profile TV productions, but support for feature films remains capped at just $5m per movie, blunting the state’s national appeal to big-budget studio shoots.

For more on filming in North Carolina see our production guide.