Ryan Millsap
we’re down south. We feel we need to prove something even though we’ve already hit parity. Eventually, the people who want to get work done will do it.” In 2019 Moonshine Post worked on over 100 episodes, editing, color finishing, sound mastering, and generally being a one-stop shop for all things post-production. “We’re doing shows with HBO, Netflix, and AMC to name a few. We want to help tell stories. This business is boom or bust. I’m aware of that, but I believe my team is tough and what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. We’re the product of this once in a lifetime opportunity to grow. You can’t farm league forever. Now we get to keep building on the talent of our group. Our team has braggable credits,” says Sawyer. “At this point, we get to bring in other badasses and learn from them. Georgia has really provided us with a lot of these opportunities. There’s no other place in my mind where this would have been possible. The main thing is we continue to do what we’ve been doing and improve on that. We have full-scale production abilities for any size production. Over time, people are realizing they can get the same caliber of work in Georgia for a better price. It’s an international industry, so we also need to keep making those connections.” Moonshine Post services commercial stories, big screen deliverables, broadcast episodics, and movies. “We just worked on Creepshow with Crafty Apes. We got to exercise all of our abilities to bring a high-quality product. We were all fans of the show and so it was the kind of thing we wanted to watch. That’s the great thing about Atlanta. You can collaborate with other awesome companies and bring your complementary games to the table. Our synergy with Crafty Apes allowed us to keep it all here. Everything was done in the state of Georgia,” says Sawyer. @theonlydrew Ryan Millsap Specialty real estate investor Ryan Millsap leads Blackhall Studios as a key figure behind Georgia’s ever- growing film and television industry. Blackhall has housed production teams for Venom , Jumanji: The Next Level , Godzilla: King of Monsters , and Jungle Cruise , which had a $250 million budget. Though only three years old, the studio has already worked with virtually every major studio out there, from Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, and Sony to HBO. Currently, Blackhall pushes out
Part of the reason we’re attracting these incredible films and productions is because we have a huge scale, good location, and a fantastic management and service team. – ryan millsap | @ryan.millsap “We just finished a big movie with Paramount, featuring Chris Pratt— The Tomorrow War . At one point, they had 30 humvees at the studio. HBO just finished up Lovecraft Country , produced by JJ Abrams and primary directed by Jordan Peele. Doctor Sleep was also at Blackhall. Part of the reason we’re attracting these incredible films and productions is because we have a huge scale, good location, and a fantastic management and service team. It’s an enormous advantage over smaller competitors,” says Millsap. Blackhall’s campus is 170 acres inside the perimeter with about 850,000 square feet under roof with empty backlots specially designated for movie making. The studio was purpose-built to service the best filmmakers and companies in the world. In total, the state received roughly $3 billion in direct spending from film and TV production. Gas stations, hotels, restaurants, and lumber purchases also saw another $6.5 billion pumped into them through the film and television industry. The next growth phase for the film environment in Georgia is having the major funding it deserves to be able to keep every aspect of production to distribution in state, adding to the nearly $10 billion film industry. @ryan.millsap
nearly $750 million of content each year as they eye the billion mark. “We’re building a big studio in London and L.A. that break ground late 2020. We’re also getting ready to do a big expansion in Atlanta that will break ground this summer,” says Millsap. “We’re striving to be the real estate leader in entertainment, which entails building great facilities for our clients. Blackhall is a Georgia-based company getting ready to do an international expansion. We’re doing something Home Depot and a select few others have managed to pull off. We’re in the early stages of building in Canada as well. The competition isn’t Los Angeles or New York. It’s Canada and the United Kingdom. We’re going toe-to-toe with two big countries —and winning.” Millsap purchased around 8,000 apartments in southeast Atlanta in 2014 during the economic downturn. As the economy improved, he sold them off and invested in commercial spaces before eventually zeroing in on real estate catered for the entertainment industry. “From the physical production side, it’s just specialty real estate. It’s exactly what I’ve been doing my entire career except it’s just applied to a different industry. I can build distribution centers for Amazon, hospitals, and on and on. All of them need space,” says Millsap.
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