The Lakewood Fairgrounds in South Atlanta has a storied past going back more than a century. Over the years, it has hosted countless farmers showing off their prize pigs, hordes of teenagers screaming down a 66-foot roller coaster drop and crowds of antique shoppers angling for bargains.
And over the past decade, on the same property, Denzel Washington’s Whip crash-landed an airplane, Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen fended off foes with her signature bow and arrow and Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven took down a scary demogorgon. None of this would have happened in Georgia without the risk-takers at EUE Screen Gems, which also owns sound stages in New York, Miami and Wilmington, North Carolina.
Two years after the state passed generous tax credits to entice the likes of Disney and Sony to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the state of Georgia, EUE/Screen Gems gambled its own millions of dollars to renovate and open its own studio on 30 acres of Lakewood land in 2010. Kris Bagwell, the studio’s first executive director who is departing later this month, promised hundreds of jobs with a goal to establish Georgia as a truly hospitable home for TV series and big-budget films. See more at AJC
