I received the following from a good friend who is well-connected in the Iowa film world. Here is that person's message to me today:
Everything is still moving along, but Dotzler is having a hard time getting the other legislators on the tax credit committee to agree on a date. I think that Governor Branstad's move to reinvent IDED has everyone very cautious. It has become a waiting game, I'm afraid.
All of the films that had a contract or an approved application have been called by non-state employees. All had various answers, but to your question on if we are going to see any films shot - No - they have moved on to other states to shoot or have scraped the project. Even if the state reinstates the film tax credits - they will not be coming here to shoot. By the way it looks (and sounds), in the film industry, Iowa is black listed and will not see large productions until Spring 2012 - if then. Our state government is no longer to be trusted. We will have to write an iron clad bill and rules before they will even look at us.
Lawsuits should be popping up this winter, which will not help us. Unfortunately, the general public does not understand that these lawsuits will be the direct result of the Governor's and Attorney General's office not honoring signed contracts for legit production houses that were planning on filming or were in pre-production Iowa. Just in Des Moines, I know of three productions that lost millions.
Sorry for the doomsday answers, but right now, my friend ... it doesn't look good. That's not to say that we are not going to fight for this. We have gathered everything we can to make sure we begin anew in the right direction.
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