Over 40 years of stories…
It only took one trip to the Cape Fear region in the mid-1980s for famed Hollywood producer Dino de Laurentiis to see the vision — a new haven for Hollywood on the coast of North Carolina. The Italian producer was looking for the Southern grandeur necessary to adapt Stephen King's blazing thriller Firestarter, and he found it in the stoic and historic Orton Plantation (circa 1725). What sprung from Dino's reign in the region over the next decade wasn't just a new canvas on which Hollywood could dream up its next great projects. The investment into Wilmington's burgeoning film industry, including a sprawling studio lot, also cultivated the first generation of a locally sourced crew base that would come to rival any across the globe.
Four decades and more than 300 film and TV projects later, the Wilmington film industry, often referred as Hollywood East, has cemented its legacy as a cultural epicenter of production and a hitmaker. Sought after for its versatility as Anywhere, USA, the coastal region boasts beach vistas, a gorgeous riverfront, one of the largest historic districts in the country and just about anything else a production might need.
As word got out, Hollywood’s footprint in the region expanded across the entire state of North Carolina. As such, the region has been the backdrop for some of the most culturally significant projects of the last few decades, including major motion pictures like Iron Man 3, The Conjuring, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Safe Haven, Scream (2022) and We're the Millers; cult favorites like Blue Velvet, Empire Records and The Crow; and pioneering live-action adaptations like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Super Mario Bros. On television, Wilmington has hosted generation-defining teen dramas like Dawson's Creek, One Tree Hill and The Summer I Turned Pretty; high-concept dramas like Sleepy Hollow, Under the Dome, Swamp Thing and Revolution; and critically acclaimed hits like The Waterfront, George & Tammy, Hightown and Eastbound & Down.
HOLLYWOOD EAST BREWSEUM is a one of-a-kind restaurant/museum/tap room that celebrates not only the movies and TV shows shot in the state, but the artist and craftsmen who have poured their hearts into making the magic.
