By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer

AUGUSTA – The movies and their money, an estimated $46 million in the past six years, may soon abandon Maine.

The reason: other states’ new tax breaks and the weak Canadian dollar.

If Maine doesn’t change, productions like the HBO miniseries “Empire Falls” may never happen again here, said Lea Girardin, the director of the Maine Film Office.

On Tuesday, Girardin and a top Hollywood production manager, Sharon Mann, took over a corner of the Hall of Flags in the State House, wooing legislators for support of a measure that would boost Maine aid to movie production.

“If we don’t get this, we’re out of the game,” Girardin said.

The measure, part of the governor’s supplemental budget, would offer a 200 percent income-tax reimbursement to movie, TV and video companies with a budget of at least $250,000.

In essence, the state would pay for roughly 10 percent of the production costs of filming here.

Without it, making big budget movies in Maine would be nearly impossible, said Mann, a Maine resident who served as the production manager on “Empire Falls,” 1997’s “Titanic” and this summer’s “Lady in the Water.”

“If you’re a movie producer and can save one or two million dollars by going to Massachusetts or Nova Scotia instead of Maine, you have to,” Mann said. “That’s your job.”

If the $20 million-plus “Empire Falls” were made today rather than two years ago, it probably wouldn’t have come here, Mann said.

The money that was spent renting hotel rooms or buying food in local shops as well as employing carpenters, plumbers, seamstresses and other trades people would never have come, she said.

In the past year, both Massachusetts and Rhode Island have passed tax incentives for media companies that pay between 15 and 20 percent of their production costs.

In Boston, director Martin Scorsese just finished shooting an $80 million movie with Leonardo DeCaprio and Jack Nicholson.

“The money that the state spends returns itself 10 times over,” Mann said.

Her summer movie, “Lady in the Water,” was filmed last year in Pennsylvania by director M. Night Shyamalan. The movie company spent $60 million, and the state gave back $6 million, she said.

“That’s very attractive to producers,” said Mann.

Girardin hopes lawmakers here in Maine hear her message, she said.

Support ought to come from both sides of the aisle, said Charles Crosby, a Democratic legislator from Topsham.

“The incentives lie dormant, not costing a thing, unless they are used by a company spending money here,” said Crosby, a co-sponsor of the measure. “And they don’t kick in unless they are spending at least $250,000.”

Without it, Maine won’t even be considered, Girardin said.

In the past, movie companies began conversations with her office with questions about locations, she said. The state lent a hand with a sales tax exemption for equipment and loaned production offices surplus furniture.

“Now, incentives is the first question they all ask,” Girardin said. “That’s it.”

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