A new spot on Market Street in Wilmington wants to be the place where movie buffs and film crew members alike can grab a beer named after Under the Dome while standing next to the actual raincoat from I Know What You Did Last Summer. The Hollywood East Brewseum, a combination restaurant and film museum, offers free admission to anyone curious about North Carolina's decades of on-screen history.
Co-owners Tyler Christensen and Patrick McCarthy, both of whom work in entertainment, came up with the idea after visiting Wilmington while living in Los Angeles, according to The News & Observer. Christensen said there was nowhere in Wilmington celebrating the local TV shows and movies that have shot there for decades, per the same report, and he envisioned the Brewseum as a place where people could sit down and talk about film. The venue sits at 1202 Market St., roughly a mile east of the Wilmington Riverwalk, and welcomed its first visitors during a soft opening in September.
That soft opening landed on September 18, according to Cardinal & Pine, which reported that Christensen and McCarthy first conceived the venue after visiting Wilmington during the COVID-19 pandemic. The building itself carries its own history: constructed in 1928, the 5,700-square-foot structure housed the Rose Ice & Coal business for decades before 1202 Market Street Wilmington LLC bought it in 2023, according to WilmingtonBiz. The rear warehouse space, featuring a barrel ceiling, was converted into the main gathering area and bar, the outlet reported.
What's on Display, and On Tap
Inside, the Brewseum displays film memorabilia including a costume worn by Sandra Bullock in 28 Days, a costume worn by James Van Der Beek in Dawson's Creek, the rain slicker from I Know What You Did Last Summer, and a football uniform from Leatherheads, per the News & Observer. Entertainment workers have loaned props and scripts to the venue, and exhibits rotate every couple of months.
The menu leans into movie-theater nostalgia with popcorn, soft pretzels, boneless chicken wings and other theater-inspired dishes, alongside rotating draft beers produced in North Carolina. Among the pours: One Tree Pils, named for One Tree Hill; Under the Foam, a nod to Under the Dome; The Sour I Turned Pretty, after The Summer I Turned Pretty; and Talladega Nights the Lager of Ricky Bobby. The Brewseum is open Mondays and Thursdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sundays from noon to 8 p.m.
Christensen developed the business concept with guidance from Cape Fear Community College's Small Business Center and the Greater Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, which helped him secure and convert the Market Street property, per WilmingtonBiz.
A Celebration Built on Shaky Industry Ground
Wilmington's film roots stretch back to the 1980s, and the city — nicknamed Wilmywood — has served as a backdrop for productions including The Summer I Turned Pretty and the ABC drama R.J. Decker, per the News & Observer. The city's major studio infrastructure, the 50-acre, 10-stage former EUE/Screen Gems campus on North 23rd Street originally built in the 1980s by producer Dino De Laurentiis, was acquired by global studio operator Cinespace Studios in September 2023 and rebranded Cinespace Wilmington, offering 152,000 square feet of stage space, according to WilmingtonBiz.
But the celebration arrives as North Carolina's entertainment industry faces an uncertain future, per the News & Observer. A change in state film incentives led Netflix's The Hunting Wives to move out of North Carolina after two seasons filming in the Charlotte area, and entertainment workers could be left without jobs — or could move their talents to other states — if more productions leave, the paper reported. Christensen said many people are affected when productions leave North Carolina, and that trade workers and small businesses depend on money the film and television industry brings in.
The disruption traces to mid-2026 state budget directives instructing commerce officials to enforce a hard annual cap of $31 million on the North Carolina Film and Entertainment Grant, according to Port City Daily. That cap created a backlog of more than $106 million in existing commitments and halted new grant allocations potentially until 2029, the outlet reported, noting that state commerce officials had previously expected lawmakers to supply additional funding if project commitments exceeded the annual limit.
State Officials Respond as Spending Slips
The North Carolina Department of Commerce acknowledged in a July 2026 statement that legislative budget guidance for the film grant program would result in little to no program activity for new applicants in coming years, even as existing grants remain funded, according to WHQR. Film and television productions in the state generated $185.5 million in direct in-state spending across 38 projects in 45 counties in 2025, down from $302 million in 2024, per NC Commerce — though the 2025 figure still marked the fourth-highest annual total since 2015.
Under statutory guidelines revised in June 2025, the Film and Entertainment Grant provides a 25% cash rebate on qualified in-state expenses, capped at $25 million per season for TV series and $20 million for feature films, with minimum spend requirements of $500,000 per episode or $1.5 million per feature. Governor Josh Stein and Commerce Secretary Lee Lilley toured Cinespace Studios in Wilmington on September 15 to meet with industry workers and address concerns about the grant program, per NC Commerce.
Outer Banks co-creator Jonas Pate, who moved the hit Netflix series from Wilmington to Charleston, South Carolina, in 2019 following the state's passage of House Bill 2, warned in August that he might relocate his planned prequel series Kildare because of the grant caps, Port City Daily reported. For now, though, the Hollywood East Brewseum stands as a monument to what Wilmington's film industry has already produced — memorabilia, beer names and all — even as its future production slate remains unsettled.
