Politics

'Dirty Dancing' remake to spend $16 million here

Abigail Breslin will star as Baby in a remake of 'Dirty Dancing' to be filmed in and around Hendersonville this spring.

By Bill Moss, Published: March 17, 2016

The production team for a television remake of Dirty Dancing will bring up to 1,225 temporary jobs to the Hendersonville area and spend $16 million over the next 45 days, a state Commerce Department spokeswoman confirmed.

Industry recruiters scored a coup when they wrested the production headquarters from Asheville. The Henderson County Partnership for Economic Development and the Tourism Development Authority announced on Friday that the production headquarters would be in Hendersonville and not Asheville, which producers had originally favored.
The remake will be a three-hour TV movie based on the 1987 hit that was filmed in part at the 1950s vintage resort properties of Lake Lure. Set production, wardrobe, props and transportation will be based in Hendersonville while filming takes place across Western North Carolina in April and May. The expected air date is in the fall on ABC.
An estimated 1,225 jobs including 900 extras, 30 cast members and 225 crew positions will support the project. The movie will star Abigail Breslin, Debra Messing, Sarah Hyland, Beau ‘Casper’ Smart and Billy Dee Williams.
The production company has not finished scouting locations to shoot, said Andrew Tate, president of the Partnership for Economic Development. High Hampton Inn & Country Club in Cashiers has confirmed that the movie will shoot on its campus, the Asheville Citizen-Times reported.
The production received a state Commerce Department incentives grant of $4 million and is projectd to spend $16 million in the state, said Kim Genardo, director of strategic and economic development communications for the Department of Commerce.

Dispute over rooms

One hotel company is asking questions about how the production company books rooms.
Kathy Kanupp, a manager of five motels in Hendersonville and a member of the Tourism Development Authority, complained that the production team had sent an email Friday afternoon that she said backed out of a request made weeks ago to book $100,000 worth of motel rooms over the next six weeks.
“We canceled two group tours that were coming in to Hendersonville to accommodate them,” Kanupp told the TDA Tuesday afternoon during its regular monthly meeting. “I had turned away over $50,000 in revenue business and sent it to other motels because we were booked on this and we were told we needed to guarantee these rooms. On Friday evening we get an email that started out, ‘After speaking with Beth Carden and the Travel and Tourism Board, we can go ahead and cancel those rooms.’”
Carden, executive director of the TDA, and Tate, who was at the meeting to talk about the Dirty Dancing production, said they had done no negotiation on room pricing and knew nothing about the production company’s plans for accommodations.
“There’s lots of decisions they haven’t made — everything from where they’ll film to who they’ll hire, to where people will stay,” Tate said. “When Beth and I met, we had a very clean focus and it was on how we connect them to the community, with everything from restaurants, to extras, to dancers. There was a long list of things we discussed. One of those was hotel rooms. They had pages and pages of hotels and rates. They hadn’t booked any rooms anywhere.”
When Carden described the discussion as a communication breakdown, Kanupp agreed that the TDA and Partnership for Economic Development needed to coordinate more closely on their efforts.
“This is not the right way to do it,” Tate said, charging that Kanupp was publicly flogging the TDA over an issue that was “irrelevant” to the recruitment of industry and tourism spending.

How to apply

Hendersonville area residents may take part in the production by working as crew members and as extras and dancers for onscreen roles or by providing period vehicles from the 1950s, '60s and early '70s.
Anyone with film industry experience as crew, production assistant, props or set dressing is encouraged to email a resume to dirtydancingmovie2016@gmail.com. Those interested in applying as an extra are encouraged to send an email that includes two photos (close up and full length), name, age, ethnicity, cell phone number, height, weight, clothing sizes, city and state of residence, and a list of any tattoos or piercings that can be seen in summer attire to ddmoviecasting@gmail.com. Please include in the subject line indication of age, ethnicity, gender and city and state of residence. Dancers should send the same information as well as dance experience and styles to ddmoviedancers@gmail.com.
To submit a period vehicle for use in the film, email a current photo, photo of the owner, year, make, model, a list of dents and damage, owner’s name, phone number, city and state of residence, and vehicle location to ddmoviecars@gmail.com.