It's official: 'Tulsa King' filming is leaving Oklahoma for Atlanta

Sylvester Stallone's Dwight "The General" Manfredi is marching on to Georgia.

After filming Season 1 in Oklahoma, "Tulsa King," the hit Paramount+ series starring Stallone, is moving production to the Atlanta area for Season 2.

"We loved hosting this incredible series for its first season and wish them the best wherever they land," Prairie Surf Studios CEO Rachel Cannon told The Oklahoman last year. The show's production was based primarily in the downtown Oklahoma City studios.

Although the start date for filming on the show's sophomore season has not yet been released, production will be based out of Eagle Rock Studios in the Atlanta suburb of Norcross.

The news reported by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the "Tulsa King" is heading to Georgia comes as some Oklahoma leaders would like to see the cap on the Sooner State's film incentive boosted to keep more movie and television projects rolling here.

The first season of the Emmy-nominated series was filmed primarily in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Film + Music Office as well as Prairie Surf Studios confirmed to The Oklahoman last year that "Tulsa King" was not expected to return to Oklahoma to film Season 2.

"As we continue to grow this industry into something that competes with states like Georgia and California, we can't be disappointed if productions need to go somewhere else to fulfill their financial needs. This was a win for Oklahoma. Full stop," Cannon said.

Prairie Surf Studios also served as the production hub last year for the anticipated summer movie "Twisters."

What impact did filming on 'Tulsa King' Season 1 have in Oklahoma?

Movies and television are big business in Georgia: The Peach State harvested $4.4 billion in spending from film and TV productions in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2022, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Plus, the move of "Tulsa King" from OKC to Atlanta will put Stallone closer to home: The "Rocky" icon and his wife, Jennifer Flavin, moved from Beverly Hills, California, to Palm Beach, Florida, in 2021.

With its first season filmed primarily in the Sooner State, "Tulsa King" — Stallone's first lead role in a television series and first collaboration with Academy Award nominee and "Yellowstone" mastermind Taylor Sheridan — premiered on Paramount+ in November 2022, just 18 months after Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed into law a new $30 million tax incentive for TV and film productions.

So far, the Stallone vehicle is the largest scripted television series to be produced in Oklahoma using the incentives under the Filmed in Oklahoma Act of 2021.

The starry show also is believed to be the largest scripted TV series ever made in Oklahoma, bringing an estimated spend of more than $56 million to the state.

Filming for the series' first season largely took place in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Bethany and the surrounding areas over the course of nearly six months in 2022.

Through the Filmed in Oklahoma Act of 2021, qualifying productions can receive a cash rebate of as much as 38% on qualified goods, labor and services related to filming in the Sooner State. The state currently offers up to $30 million a year for movie and TV productions.

Last year, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed HB 1362, which would have raised the annual cap for the state film incentive from $30 million to $80 million, but the bill stalled in the Senate.

With the critical acclaim for "Killers of the Flower Moon" — boasting a reported $200 million budget, Martin Scorsese's Oscar-nominated epic is the the largest movie production ever undertaken in the Sooner State — Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell told Oklahoma Voice last fall that he hopes legislators will revisit a possible boost in the incentive's annual cap.

Pinnell said the state has turned away tens of millions of dollars worth of film and TV projects due to the program’s existing funding restrictions.

In the most recently finished fiscal year, Oklahoma received 119 applications seeking a combined $158 million — $128 million more than the state had to offer — in film rebates, Jeanette Stanton, director of the Oklahoma Film + Music Office, told Oklahoma Voice.

In contrast, Georgia’s film incentive is the biggest in the country, according to Variety, and the Peach State is one of six states that doesn't have a cap on its film incentive.

Georgia is expected to give out $1.35 billion in credits just in this year, according to The Associated Press, but Georgia legislative leaders announced last week that they want production companies to do more than they have been to receive the top 30% credit on state income taxes.

'Tulsa King' cast: Who stars alongside Sylvester Stallone in the hit streaming series?

Also listed among the executive producers, Stallone stars in "Tulsa King" as Dwight "The General" Manfredi, a 75-year-old New York gangster newly released after serving a 25-year prison sentence. He is quickly banished by his former boss' son to Tulsa, where he sets out to establish a new criminal empire in a strange new land.    

"Tulsa King" also stars Dana Delaney, Garrett Hedlund, Andrea Savage, Martin Starr, Jay Will, Max Casella, Domenick Lombardozzi, Vincent Piazza and A.C. Peterson.

The series' debut season was an immediate hit: Just days after "Tulsa King's" Nov. 13, 2022, bow, Tanya Giles, chief programming officer for Paramount Streaming, announced that Paramount+ had achieved the most subscriber sign-ups in a single day since the previous year's relaunch of the streamer. She attributed the success to "Tulsa King" and continued year-over-year growth of the "NFL on CBS."

With its Nov. 20, 2022, cable debut after "Yellowstone" — Sheridan's record-smashing flagship series — "Tulsa King" was able to rule as the No. 1 new series premiere on cable of 2022, according to a news release.

With 3.7 million total viewers, "Tulsa King's" cable bow not only beat HBO's "Game of Thrones" prequel "House of the Dragon" but also bested FX's "The Old Man," starring Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow and Amy Brenneman.

Those successes earned the series a speedy renewal for a second season, but didn't guarantee that the production would return to the Sooner State to film its sophomore run.

"Studios can have a variety of reasons why they choose a different location," Stanton, the state film office director, told The Oklahoman last year.

What other changes are coming for 'Tulsa King' with Season 2?

"Tulsa King's" explosive Season 1 finale debuted Jan. 8, 2023, on Paramount+ and capped the show's nine-episode freshman run with a cliffhanger.

The show's freshman season was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Stunt Coordination for a Comedy Series or Variety Program.

Work on "Tulsa King" Season 2 was hindered by last year's May-September writers strike, which overlapped with the July-November actors strike. An Oscar-nominated actor and writer, Stallone talked with Newsweek in May 2023 about the impact of the Writers Guild of America strike on "Tulsa King" Season 2, while voicing his support for the writers.

"It's definitely affecting work because we can't move forward with a lot of projects, especially 'Tulsa King,'" Stallone told Newsweek. "But I think it's changed so much that the writers do have a serious gripe. ... They're living in under this cloud of AI (artificial intelligence). It's a very terrifying time to be a writer. They work on, like, for our show ('Tulsa King'), eight episodes, and then you're done, and that's it. Like, 'What do I live on for the rest of the year?' sort of a thing. So I understand their plight."

The move in filming location won't be the only change behind the scenes for "Tulsa King" Season 2. Initial showrunner Terence Winter ("The Sopranos," "The Wolf of Wall Street") stepped down in February 2023 while remaining an executive producer on the series.

According to Deadline, the Oscar-nominated writer left his showrunner role due to creative differences, which Sheridan seemed to confirm in a cover story last year in The Hollywood Reporter.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: After leaving Oklahoma, 'Tulsa King' moves production to Atlanta area