The Ohio Department of Development is giving almost 25 film, TV and theatre projects more than $46 million in Motion Picture Tax Credits. The program provides a tax credit of 30% on production, cast and crew wages and other in-state spending for approved projects.
Several TV series scored credits to produce programs in Worthington, Gahanna and Columbus.
The state awarded the animated series “Gabriel and the Guardians” more than $2 million in tax credits to continue production in the Columbus area.
In the show, Gabriel, a celestial guardian, is sent to the dark realm of Ara to recover a powerful stolen artifact from the celestial realm.
The show's creator, Jason Moody, lives in Delaware, Ohio, and wanted to produce the project with local central Ohio talent.
Allie Vugrincic: So tell me, what inspired this show? It seems like it has a biblical influence. We see, for example, Nephilim, which are creatures mentioned in the Old Testament. And of course, Gabriel is the name of a pretty well-known angel. But the show also has some fantasy elements.
Jason Moody: It was really during COVID. I was a creative working at JP Morgan Chase for 15 years, but I always wanted to make cartoons. You know, I grew up in the 80s and 90s, loving "He-Man" and "Batman: The Animated Series" and "Ninja Turtles" and all that stuff. And so in the sort of vacuum of creativity that was COVID, I was listening to a podcast with my wife about the book of Genesis and it just sort of piqued my interest. I got super interested in the cultures and the world of Genesis.
Growing up, if you ever went to church or Sunday school, you have this kind of one idea of what the people and the cultures and the world of Genesis was. And it was sort of Greek and Roman. We just applied sort of, tunics and robes, but that's not really what the world of Genesis was. You're looking at a sort of paleo-Hebrew Semitic culture that was full of ziggurats and sort of gods from many different cultures. So you've got Sumerian gods and you've got Leviathan and you got behemoth. And I just found that fascinating and not represented in much fantasy.
Allie Vugrincic: What is the story arc?
Jason Moody: I wanted to tell a story that is Genesis, really 6, 7 and 8. Genesis 6 starts out and says, 'in the days of Noah, there were giants that walked the earth.' And I just thought that was a phenomenal place to start. I've described it before: imagine the story of Noah playing out with celestial beings like archangels in the story. And set in a world that feels more like "Lord of the Rings" than it does like "Ben-Hur."
Allie Vugrincic: The pilot came out in February. Where does the production of the rest of the first season stand?
Jason Moody: We are back in production. So we're an indie. And so, while we have a distributor that's called Angel Studios, they don't fund the show. Before everything with what we're getting from the Ohio tax credit, we raised, independently, $2 million from the crowd and some private investors. That allowed us to make the pilot and then allowed us to get some pre-production done on the season, which is gonna be about 13 episodes. And so we've raised some more money, and with the Ohio tax credit, it's enabling us to go back into production and finish up the whole first season.
Allie Vugrincic: So you live in Delaware, Ohio. Why produce the animation here in central Ohio instead of Los Angeles, Atlanta or somewhere else?
Jason Moody: Part of my dream — part of this was about, I believe that creativity shouldn't be monopolized by a single city or even by two coasts. I really wanted to get into the industry. I wanted to be a creative, but it seemed like it was inaccessible to someone that was in the Midwest. I saw an opportunity to really stand my ground and go, 'no, if I'm going to do this, I'm gonna do it with local talent. I'm going to build a studio.' It's not just about creating a show. It's actually about building a studio here. And so that's what we've done. We've launched Colossal Entertainment. It's an Ohio-based animation studio. It'll be doing all the animation for the show. And we've got some other cool opportunities to work on other things as well.
Allie Vugrincic: When will we be seeing more of Gabriel and the Guardians?
Jason Moody: Probably mid-next year we'll have the rest of the season is what we're aiming for.
