WILMINGTON, N.C. — A state-of-the-art film studio on the North Carolina coast is for sale just a few years after a major expansion — a sign of the broader slump the industry is facing in the state.
No film grant applications are being accepted by the state. And industry workers are openly wondering whether productions on the coast, long known as Hollywood East, will ever again reach the levels seen before the pandemic.
They’re all symptoms of the same problem: inaction by lawmakers in Raleigh.
Production has mostly wrapped on season two of “R.J. Decker,” an ABC show about a quirky private eye in Florida that has been shot in Wilmington. But questions remain about whether the cameras will roll again, as the industry finds itself at a turning point.
The state’s newest film studio, Dark Horse Stages in Wilmington, which has struggled to match with projects, is for sale. Entrepreneur Kirk Englebright and his co-founder had funneled $28 million into Dark Horse. But now the property, on 11 acres off Market Street with 131,798 square feet of building space, is being marketed by Lee & Associates as “warehouse, flex, and office” — not a film complex.
Some in the industry called that news shocking, the latest blow to a sector at a breaking point.
“That was devastating,” Marthe Pineau, a set decorator whose credits include “Black Phone,” “Muppets in Space” and the pilot for “R.J. Decker,” said of the news about Dark Horse. “That speaks volumes.”
Pineau, a member of union IATSE, has been among those lobbying to draw attention to the issue so productions will stay. In the case of the show “The Hunting Wives,” a Lionsgate production that filmed in the Charlotte region before moving to Georgia amid the funding uncertainty in North Carolina, the effort didn’t work.
“Raleigh didn’t come around to support ‘Hunting Wives,’”Pineau said. “Right now we’re trying to urge state legislators to move on this but it’s like, they keep playing the blame game.”
Read the full story on CBJ’s website here.
©2026 Cox Media Group
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/LH3JSJEF3VBLRJLJQESEAG34AM.png)
