The announcement came in the form of – what else – a trailer. Featuring Lexington favorite, actor Steve Zahn, selling a filmmaker on the city’s variety of locations, from the Kentucky Castle to caves to downtown hotspots.
"So when you think of Kentucky, what do you think of?" Zahn asks.
"Rolling hills. Brick houses filled with bourbon," director Rick Gomez says.
"Yeah, but you know what else is in Kentucky? A heck of a lot more."
Driven in part by the state’s 30-35% entertainment tax credit, FilmLEX will be headed up by industry veteran Lisa Brin.
"We will serve as that connective tissue to the local community to serve film and television productions that we want to bring here to Lexington and Central Kentucky," she explains. "Ultimately, we are an untapped resource."
But FilmLEX also hopes to make graduating college students with the film bug think twice about immediately making that jump to L.A. or New York. A networking community called LAXLEX, made of Lexington film industry talent and some who have decided to move back to Kentucky, has been set up to create a pipeline of sorts.
As for what kind of productions Lexingtonians could see, Brin says FilmLEX does have an idea of the scale they’re envisioning.
"We're really focusing on our sweet spot of $1,000,000 to $10,000,000 feature films and television series," she says.
And of course there’s the goal of increasingly visibility, getting Lexington up on the big screen.
