North Carolina just can’t get its act together regarding anti-LGBTQ laws.
And now, according to StarNewsOnline, the state may have just lost $60 million in revenue thanks to the inaction of state lawmakers to repeal those laws.
Streaming giant, Netflix, was looking to shoot a new series, OBX, in the Tar Heel state but balked thanks to HB 142.
The law, enacted in 2017 was meant to be a ‘fix’ on previous legislation HB 2, which marginalized transgender people by requiring them to use public bathrooms that align with the gender on their birth certificates.
HB 142 partially repealed HB 2, but left in place bans on local communities passing their own anti-discrimination laws through 2020.
Ten episodes of the new project have been ordered by Netflix, and Jonas Pate, who created the show, wanted to shoot in his hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina. But the ban on local municipalities enacting their own legislation is a sticking point for Netflix.
“This tiny law is costing this town 70 good, clean, pension-paying jobs and also sending a message to those people who can bring these jobs and more that North Carolina still doesn’t get it,” Pate said.
Pate added that the production is projected to spend in the neighborhood of $60 million in whatever state the series shoots.
Pate, and his brother Josh, have previously created the NBC series Surface, which was shot in Wilmington.
But this past weekend, Pate found himself scouting sections of Charleston, South Carolina, for the new production.
Freshman state Sen. Harper Peterson, a Democrat from Hanover, hopes to see the issue addressed this week as the state Assembly is in session.
“That is a decision the legislature has to make and realize that it is one more opportunity we are losing if we don’t,” Peterson told StarNewsOnline. “We have to get back and be competitive with other states. It just hurts to see a production about North Carolina go to South Carolina.”
OBX is described as a coming-of-age story that follows four teens in the Outer Banks whose lives are changed when a hurricane cuts off all power to the islands.
“When these lifelines for teens like phones and Snapchat are gone, it really reorients the generational divisions,” says Pate.
