With Utah offering greater financial incentives to shoot movies here than it ever has before, the state has caught the attention of Hollywood. A new bill in the Utah Legislature wants to make sure it stays that way in the future.

Senate Bill 278 would raise the maximum cash rebate incentive offered to film companies to shoot a movie in the state from $500,000 to $2.5 million. The bill cleared the Senate Business and Labor Committee Tuesday and as of Thursday had been placed on the consent calendar for a second reading.

Virginia Pearce, director of the Utah Film Commission, said that, for budgetary reasons, the state typically doles out cash rebates to smaller productions, while larger productions usually receive tax rebates. But it may eventually become beneficial to give more cash rebates to bigger productions, and if that happens, the bill would allow Utah to remain competitive with other states hoping to lure filmmakers.

Both forms of incentives cap at a maximum of 25 percent of the money a film company leaves in the state. However, there is no dollar amount maximum for the tax rebates.

“It’s kind of one of those things that needs to be done in case it does make sense in the future to have more cash than tax credits,” Pearce said. “We would be very limited if we could only give away $500,000 at a time. So that’s really going to help in the future. We’re setting ourselves up for success down the road.”

Since the Legislature raised the tax rebate maximum from 20 to 25 percent in 2011, Utah has become a more attractive option for many film productions. Last year, the film industry spent around $60 million in the state, Pearce said, up from the $20 million range seen before the increase. Since 2011, big-budget movies, such as 2013’s “The Lone Ranger,” have shown off what the state has to offer to a broad audience.

“We use the films as a billboard for the state in a lot of ways,” Pearce said. “Not only do films like ‘Lone Ranger’ or ‘John Carter’ showing off the beauty and diversity of our location, but we also talk about film as a billboard in the sense that we have great crew and great resources. We have a thriving industry here that we’d like to showcase a little bit more.”

While the financial incentives help get the attention of film companies, Pearce said there are other reasons they choose Utah, as well. That Salt Lake City is just a 90-minute flight from Los Angeles is an important factor, as is the diversity of landscape the state offers.

Also paramount is the fact Utah nearly always has qualified workers available to staff movie crews, Pearce said.

“A lot of these bigger states have so much going on that productions can’t find enough crew for the film.”