The Boys in the Boat, the best-selling book by Daniel James Brown, starts with a pan of Seattle that is undoubtedly cinematic. Under a gray sky during the Great Depression, ferries crawl across the Sound, newsboys peddle two-cent Post-Intelligencers, and children wake in the makeshift cardboard beds of a Hooverville.

But Brown’s lens eventually settles on two stocky University of Washington freshmen booking it across a quad for a boathouse along the Montlake Cut. There, in and around a former seaplane hangar, a group of rowers will train and develop into a gold medal–winning crew at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

The still-standing ASUW Shell House might seem like an ideal spot to film the inevitable movie adaptation of Brown’s narrative nonfiction. This “cathedral” (Brown’s word) occupies the same lightly trafficked tip of city land it did back in the 1930s. From here, in the shadow of what’s called “The Greatest Setting in College Football,” it’s easy to conjure a picturesque vision of our city: the adjacent lake during a dawn workout, oars rippling the serene waters, snowcapped Cascades in the distance. A timeless shot for a historical piece. No director could possibly turn that down—right?

George Clooney can, apparently. When the director’s long-awaited adaptation of The Boys in the Boat hits screens later this year, locals will see a replica of the historical shell house, rather than the real thing. The film was predominantly shot outside of London.

Which shouldn’t surprise anyone. By now it’s a familiar plot around here: a movie or TV show with strong Seattle ties, filmed elsewhere. Some at least try to fake us well. Former UW executive creative director Murphy Gilson, who worked closely with The Boys in the Boat production team, stresses that the shell house replica drew from a deep collection of historical photos, films, and artifacts. They wanted authenticity “right down to the socks.” (Gilson also speculated that having to digitally remove the modern Husky Stadium or skyscrapers from various shots might be expensive.)

Still, it hurts to feel like you got a creative flyover. What happened to Hollywood’s love affair with actually filming in our town? You can still visit the Capitol Hill apartment complex in Cameron Crowe’s 1992 homage to grunge, Singles, or the floating home on Lake Union that anchored Sleepless in Seattle the next year. Even the 1999 high school rom-com 10 Things I Hate About You filmed classes at Stadium High in Tacoma and prom at the Paramount and Century Ballroom.

Yet, three decades after Sleepless in Seattle solidified Hollywood’s ’90s romance with our corner of the country, major film and TV productions now regularly rely on surrogate cities to capture slices of Seattle life. Frequently, that surrogate is our Canadian neighbor to the north. When the internet surmised that the next season of the video game-turned-HBO drama The Last of Us would be set in Seattle, hope that the show’s “infected” would pop out from behind Gas Works Park pipes quickly dissipated; reps confirmed it would be set in Seattle but shoot in, of course, Vancouver.

Don’t blame the Canadians or the Clooneys of the world for productions heading elsewhere, though. Over the years, “we lost our edge” in attracting film creatives to our town, Seattle city council member Sara Nelson said last September. Financially and figuratively.

Nelson was standing behind a lectern at Ark Lodge Cinemas in Columbia City to announce the creation of the Seattle Film Commission, a new group of industry pros whose mandate is to bring more productions to our city. The commission will lean a little on the new Harbor Island Studios, a 117,000-square-foot film production facility along the Duwamish River, and a lot on new financial incentives (managed by nonprofit Washington Filmworks) to lure filmmakers here.

In a streaming era when “content” is abundant and box office returns are highly unpredictable, where to film often comes down to where the most tax breaks are. And historically, Washington’s offered little relief. Its longstanding $3.5 million tax break cap was among the least competitive in the country. But after a bill passed during the 2022 legislative session to raise the maximum amount to $15 million, local film boosters are optimistic that production managers, whether their projects are set here or not, will choose us moving forward. “Money drives all of this,” said Tom Skerritt, a local veteran of screen and stage who played “Viper” in the original Top Gun, after Nelson’s remarks.

Skerritt added, however, that additional investment remained uncertain, alluding to an uncomfortable truth about film production here over the past 30 years. As our region’s gotten richer and less grunge-y, our state’s gotten stingier, comparatively speaking, when it comes to attracting big-screen talent.

“They are kicking our butts with incentives,” says Kate Becker, King County’s creative economy director. But the math is changing. Before, Washington’s paltry cap was enough to support about three or four productions annually, according to Washington Filmworks executive director Amy Lillard. Now, the quadrupled cap could support three episodic series, four feature films, and three projects by Washington filmmakers. Twilight sleuths have long since figured out that Oregon largely subbed in for Forks. Maybe next time, Washington will get to play itself. 

The other part of the equation is Harbor Island Studios. King County’s equivalent of a Hollywood studio is tucked within an industrial port filled with shipping containers and cranes. Its vast interior includes two very insulated soundstages, one elephant door, a green screen, and ample room to build sets. Love Is Blind and Amy Poehler–backed comedy Three Busy Debras have already tested out the new space, along with many other smaller productions. “For the most part, when you do bigger productions, you go to either Oregon or LA. But that is changing now with Harbor Island Studios,” says Nuk Suwanchote, an actor-writer-director who was filming his sketch comedy show, Thai Guys, in Stage 2.

Shooting in Seattle isn’t just about elevating our city on the national stage. Suwanchote belongs to a robust indie film community, renowned for luminaries like the late director Lynn Shelton, who can find more opportunities to advance their careers, or even just find work. When Three Busy Debras shot here over a five-month span, it supported more than 200 cast and crew members. “We kept people employed for a very long time, which was nice,” says Tony Becerra, a member of King County’s film advisory board.

Local officials are paying attention to who’s getting those gigs, too. The Seattle Film Commission grew out of a task force devoted to improving equity in local productions, and the incentive program includes funds for training and jobs for marginalized communities.

Even before the incentives kick in, a more contemporary version of Seattle on screen has recently surfaced. Last year, in Steven Soderbergh’s Kimi, an agoraphobic tech worker searches for justice as the surveilling, Siri-like product she’s working on documents a crime. The interior shots were largely done in LA, but Zoe Kravitz’s character, to much acclaim, was also filmed marching on Seattle streets.

The glossier, technological, progressive-minded version of Seattle in Kimi underscored a paradox: that our city has slipped away from Hollywood’s spotlight as its influence on technology and politics has grown nationally. Perhaps new series and films produced here could help us reckon with its tumultuous growth. One thing’s for sure: A new era of Seattle on film would look little like the old one.