Sony Pictures may relocate 100 visual effects workers to New Mexico

California may lose yet more film-industry positions if financial incentives are extended.
By Richard Verrier, Times Staff Writer
March 9, 2007

Sony Pictures Imageworks, one of Hollywood's leading visual effects companies, plans to move more than 100 jobs from Culver City to New Mexico if state lawmakers give their expected blessing next week to film industry financial sweeteners.

Although Imageworks would remain in Culver City, along with a majority of its employees, the decision to shift a major chunk of its operation elsewhere marks a symbolic blow to Southern California as it struggles to keep its signature business from being poached by other states and countries.

Most of the battles to date have involved trying to keep specific films or TV shows from shooting elsewhere. In this case, the move involves the kind of nuts-and-bolts operation that makes up the film and TV industry's backbone.

"It's an indication that the bricks-and-mortar infrastructure that we have long enjoyed is not completely rooted here," said Kathleen Milnes, president of the Entertainment Economy Institute, a nonprofit research group based in Pacific Palisades. "That should serve as a wake-up call."

Imageworks executives and city and state film officials in New Mexico declined to comment.

The proposed facility would eventually employ about 300 visual effects technicians and computer animators — about a third of Imageworks' current workforce — within the Albuquerque Studios, a newly opened film and TV production studio near the city's airport, according to three people familiar with the plans.

The project, however, hinges on approval of a state bill that would make permanent an existing program providing a combined 25% rebate on taxable production expenses. Sony had been seeking reassurances from state officials that the company would fully qualify for the rebate.

Los Angeles has lost thousands of jobs because of runaway production in the last decade, as producers flocked to lower-cost areas offering incentives. Increasingly, other states are trying to establish permanent film economies by building soundstages and luring post-production firms such as Imageworks.

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