As Christina Fong walked out of a Whole Foods near the warehouse district in New Orleans on Saturday afternoon, $125 of groceries in hand, she got the call: It was time to evacuate.
With the news that Hurricane Katrina was on a direct course for New Orleans, Fong, an assistant director on the upcoming Denzel Washington film "Deja Vu," was told to pack her belongings and be ready to board a charter jet that night.
Twelve hours later, Fong and about 70 crew members from "Deja Vu" and "The Guardian," both Walt Disney Studios productions, were back in Los Angeles, grateful to have been whisked to safety but anxious about their futures.
Now that the hurricane is over and they are out of danger, Fong said, she is "concerned about my job and what happens to all of our jobs."
With their departures -- and that of other crews -- Louisiana watched millions of dollars of Hollywood money potentially get washed away Monday as Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast.
The state, one of the most aggressive in using tax breaks to lure production from California, reported film and television spending of more than $125 million last year, up from $3.9 million in 2002.
Last year, 27 feature films and TV movies were made in Louisiana.
As Katrina flooded streets, ravaged homes and left hundreds of thousands without power in Louisiana and Mississippi, producers of half a dozen film and TV projects slated for the Bayou State scrambled to figure out their own futures.
Warner Bros. said crews for the Joel Silver production "The Reaping" were evacuated by plane from Baton Rouge to Austin, Texas.
Other productions to be shot in the state this year include the films "Bug," starring Ashley Judd, and "Big Momma's House 2," with Martin Lawrence, and the FX Network television series "Thief."
Even with its generous tax incentives -- Louisiana paid out $67 million in tax credits to movie and TV productions in 2004 -- the fallout from Katrina could make the state a much tougher sell, at least in the short term, industry watchers say.
"This is probably going to put them out of competition for a while," said Jack Kyser, chief economist with the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
An inevitable run-up in the price of building supplies, for example, will substantially cut into a film's bottom line, he said, noting, "If you pay for a set, you're going to have to pay dearly for production supplies."
