In the news as of late have been Medient Studios and the dismissal of its founder and CEO, Manu Kumaran, and the legal action he has been taking against the company’s new leadership. There has been the exposure of early mismanagement and the rapid devaluation of the company’s stock and then the reinstatement of trading under Medient’s new leadership. 

What at first appeared to be the death of a movie-making dream in Effingham County Georgia is looking more and more like a temporary condition - growing pains for a very promising industry that is in its infancy in Georgia.  

Medient is up and running, tending to the business of producing films, even though construction has not even begun on the back lot and sound stages. The original plans to build a futuristic compound that more resembled a sci-fi earth colony on some distant planet have been scaled down to a much more realistic and economical place and way of moviemaking. A new master plan and agreement between Medient and the Effingham County Industrial Development Authority is in process.

For Medient, it’s distractions aside and back to business. Currently under production is the Chad Darnell production, R.I.P. The film, which in its writing phase has had several working titles, including The Telling, The Marked, and most recently, The Damned, is a horror movie. 

Darnell, also an actor and screen writer, is a native of Atlanta who recently returned home after a 13 year stint in Los Angeles as a casting director. While on the West Coast, he produced and directed some of his own projects and developed others for many established directors and producers. His feature production, Birthday Cake, which is the sequel to an earlier comedy, Groom’s Cake, premiered on the film festival circuit last summer and took home a host of festival awards.

According to Darnell, making “thrillers” or “horror movies” is a low-cost, high-return enterprise. The budget model runs from about $500,000 to $3 million, according to Darnell. “It’s a model that’s been set up by movies like The Purge, Insidious, and others,” said Darnell. “What a lot of these studios are doing is they’re making them for $2 million and their actors and others work for scale, and then get paid points on the back-end. So, instead of hiring an Ethan Hawke (who starred in The Purge) for $5 million, you get him for scale and then he’ll make 'X' amount of money on the back-end, which is really the smart way of doing it.” Darnell said that this formula is not necessarily what Medient is doing, “. . . but you want to keep into the formula that’s out there,” he said.

Darnell admits unabashedly that he is a firm believer in the paranormal and the reality of haunting. He, himself, is the screenwriter of this film. “It’s from experiences I’ve had here in Savannah,” said. He had come to Savannah on a research project for Turner. “I met Jack and Margaret DeBolt,” he said. Margaret was a well-known Savannah author and historian until her death in 2009. “I began writing the script after that 2006,” said Darnell. “Medient bought the script from me but I wanted to produce it, so I sacrificed salary for title. Once those issues [with the former CEO] went away, were able to fast-track the script.”

As for financial risk, Darnell said, “Horror movies sell. You don’t have to have any name actors in a horror movie for it to do well. We could make this movie right now and slap it into Red Box® and it’s going to make $700,000. Or, we could go out and cast several actors whose name recognition is going to mean something in Europe, and make a lot of money there.” Darnell said there’s no reason for the movie’s budget to top $3 million. “It’s not a big visual effects movie,” he said. “There are a couple visual effects, and I want to do them a certain way, and we’ll see if I get my way.” Darnell said he wants to work with students from SCAD on this. “As a filmmaker, I want to develop from within, locally, rather than bring people in.” 

Georgia’s nascent film industry exists almost exclusively in Fayetteville with the British-owned Pinewood Studios, and in Effingham County with Medient. In Savannah, though many successful movies have been filmed against its matchless backdrop, those movies were made by Hollywood. As to whether we’re making the right kind of movies in Georgia to attract a much greater constituency of filmmakers, Darnell said, “No, we are absolutely not making the right kind of movies. We are not making anything.” Darnell cites the Georgia taxes on moviemaking as the big hindrance right now, but the outlook is getting brighter. “I think they are changing the tax bracket to make it lower so that smaller budget movies can benefit from the tax structure as well. What we need is for our State to invest in our industry; we them to get educated as to what it means for a state to invest in it–what it means if you don’t get the tax write-off.” His message to state lawmakers: “Help us make these films.”

Under its new leadership, Medient and its moviemaking look promising for Georgia. Pinewood also has the potential for explosive growth if given the right business climate for the industry. With a more industry-friendly tax structure on the way, and a wealth of new technical and artistic talent pouring in and out of SCAD in Savannah and Atlanta, the industry is primed to create jobs that keep graduates here and bring countless other talented people from around the world.