Thirty miles south of downtown Atlanta, tucked into rolling hills of pine trees, sits 700 acres of studios, workshops, homes, restaurants, classrooms and offices — all dedicated to creating the next culture-shaping movie or TV series.
This fall, Trilith was the perfect place for one group of graduate students to see a “creative ecosystem” in action.
“I think seeing this helps us put all the pieces together,” said Sam Toole, a 2024 Terry College graduate and current Master of Science in Business Analytics student who traveled to Trilith as part of Terry College senior lecturer David Sutherland’s course Business in the Creative Economy. “We’ve had people from different parts of the creative industry visit our class, but visiting Trilith helped underscore how all those roles work together. It put everything in perspective.”
Over the past two decades, Georgia’s creative industry has become a $4 billion, a 60,000-job segment of the state’s economy. In Sutherland’s course, students from business and filmmaking backgrounds investigate how business and economic development decisions shaped that rise.
During the tour of Trilith, they heard from Trilith visionary Dan Cathy and Trilith Studios CEO Frank Patterson about the importance of place-making and the synergy that Trilith is working to create.
Patterson told students that Trilith Studios — home to many Marvel and Disney productions — is more than just a filming factory.
“All of my friends who are movie producers think of us as a stage facility,” Patterson told the class during their tour. “We’re thinking much broader than that.
“We’re focused on investing our capital to create a creative market ecosystem,” he said. “What that means is we want to gather all the brains and businesses that — if you put them together at this place — allow us to provide everything storytellers need to create anything they can imagine. So, that’s what we’re doing.”
That means having lenders, insurance underwriters, writing labs, production teams, special effects studios, equipment rental, personal trainers, marketing teams and intellectual property attorneys all centrally located, Patterson said.
For film producers such as Tiffany FitzHenry, having a local creative ecosystem means she can develop, film, and market a project completely in Georgia or work in the Los Angeles film ecosystem. For years, filmmakers filmed in Georgia, but most of the financial and business decisions were made in L.A, she told students.
Georgia isn’t all the way there yet, but projects like Trilith build the business end of Georgia’s movie industry, she said.
“I don’t think anyone since the beginning has had everything they’ve needed to develop that part of the industry locally and take that mantel, but that’s what we have here now in Georgia,” FitzHenry said. “It’s not that everything out there is wrong; it’s not. But we have a chance to recreate that ecosystem and fix some of the roadblocks.”
The tour opened student’s eyes to careers managing business end services for Georgia-grown production houses.
“I didn’t know the impact of the creative economy on the entire state before this class,” said MSBA student Will Noll. “It’s good to know what else is out there beyond all the things people usually associate with a business degree.”
Whether students choose to pursue careers in the creative economy or not, future Georgia business leaders need to understand this growing part of the economy to make informed decisions, Sutherland said.
“Employment in Georgia’s film industry has seen over 500% growth in the past 20 years,” Sutherland said. “In fact, Georgia is second only to Hollywood in terms of sound stage space, with over 3,000,000 square feet available. It’s a major player in Georgia’s economy today, and it will only grow.”