Netflix political drama series "House of Cards" is demanding millions of dollars more in tax credits from Maryland, or it will go elsewhere.
The Washington Post reports that California-based production company Media Rights Capital has pushed back its filming schedule for its third season to see if lawmakers boost credits for film and television projects enough.
Last year, lawmakers boosted the $7.5 million annual allocation to $25 million, but they're divided on whether to do that again.
The show's first two seasons were filmed in Maryland and economic development officials say the show injected more than $250 million into the state economy. Maryland reimbursed Media Rights Capital more than $11 million in tax credits after the first season and that amount could reach $15 million for the second season.
Actor Laurence Olivier, center, with his wife Joan Plowright, left, and actress Lauren Bacall at the U.S. premiere of Lord Olivier's only Shakespearean production made exclusively for television, "King Lear," in New York, May 3, 1983. (AP Photo/Carlos Rene Perez, File)
Award-winning British actor Joan Plowright, who with her late husband Laurence Olivier did much to revitalize the U.K.'s theatrical scene in the decades after World War II, has died. She was 95.
In a statement Friday, her family said Plowright died the previous day at Denville Hall, a retirement home for actors in southern England, surrounded by her loved ones.
"She enjoyed a long and illustrious career across theatre, film and TV over seven decades until blindness made her retire," the family said. "We are so proud of all Joan did and who she was as a loving and deeply inclusive human being."
Part of an astonishing generation of British actors, including Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins and Maggie Smith, Plowright won a Tony Award, two Golden Globes and nominations for an Oscar and an Emmy. She was made a dame by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, Plowright racked up dozens of stage roles in everything from Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull" to William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice." She stunned in Eugene Ionesco's "The Chairs," and George Bernard Shaw's totemic two female roles "Major Barbara" and "Saint Joan."
"I've been very privileged to have such a life," Plowright said in a 2010 interview with The Actor's Work. "I mean it's magic and I still feel, when a curtain goes up or the lights come on if there's no curtain, the magic of a beginning of what is going to unfold in front of me."
The esteem in which Plowright was held in London was evident with the news that theaters across the West End will dim their lights for two minutes at 7 p.m. on Tuesday in her honor.
Born Joan Ann Plowright in Brigg, Lincolnshire, England, her mother ran an amateur drama group and Plowright was... Read More
