Even as the Seattle-based movie "Safety Not Guaranteed" was winning applause from audiences and critics at the Sundance Film Festival last week, the head of the state film office was in Olympia fighting to save the incentive program that got it made here in the first place.

According to the film's creators, the quirky comedy would not have been made in Washington were it not for the state's incentive program, which gives discounts to films shot here using local businesses and crew. The bill to renew the program is currently languishing in committee.

With 40 states offering film incentives, investors will simply not allow movies to be shot here without one, says Amy Lillard, director of the state Washington Filmworks office. "If Portland's giving you a million dollars back and Washington is giving you nothing, where are you going to go?"

Colin Trevorrow, the director of "Safety Not Guaranteed," loved Washington's locations and its skilled crew, but "The success of 'Safety Not Guaranteed' simply wouldn't have been possible without the incentive program in Washington State," he said, shortly after his film won a national distribution deal — the ultimate Sundance prize. "It saddens me that productions like ours will no longer be able to consider the state a viable option," if the program is not renewed.

Washington's Motion Picture Competitiveness Program gives a refund of up to 30 percent to movies, television shows and commercials filmed in Washington. The money comes with strings: The production has to reach a certain spending threshold ($500,000 for a feature film); use local businesses and workers; and offer health and retirement benefits.

The incentive, Lillard says, is not about making art; it's about making money for the state. When the legislature approved it in 2007, "We were told to create jobs and bring in money, and that's exactly what we did."

Washington Filmworks' most recent data shows that for the $20 million the state put into the incentive program over its lifetime, film companies spent about $137 million. In other words, Lillard said, the state and its workers got an almost sevenfold return on the investment.

The problem is that in lean times, even a program that makes more than it costs is a hard sell. "In this current economic climate, legislators are having to make very difficult decisions," Lillard said.

"But you have to invest in something to get things going again."

It's not that the bill to renew it, Senate Bill 5539, lacks supporters in the Legislature. It hasn't been voted down. It just hasn't been voted on. The bill is in committee, where it was at the end of the last legislative session after it passed in the Senate but never made it to the floor of the House. Lillard thinks legislators are waiting until new revenue projections come out this month to vote on the measure.

Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, is one of the bill's sponsors. She says the bill's focus is on jobs and points out that projects don't get any incentive money until they have gone through a rigorous review of their spending, including wages and benefits, in the state. She is optimistic that the bill will move forward. "I think we'll get it out of the Senate and, hopefully, out of the House," she said between committee meetings on Wednesday.

Lacey Leavitt, a Seattle-based producer who worked on "Safety Not Guaranteed," sees the potential loss of the incentive as the biggest threat to her career here. Seattle was a "ghost town" of filmmaking a few years ago, when she first graduated from the University of Washington and went to work in New York, she said.

Its loss would mean that the people she has worked with on projects like "The Catechism Cataclysm" and "The Off Hours" — both of which also went to Sundance — will have to leave the state to find work. And that will dry up the pool of talent that keeps producers and directors coming back after they're initially enticed by the incentive.

"The whole reason I've been able to stay here is because I can get work on projects that were only filmed here because of the incentive," Leavitt said. "When the incentive came, that's when the game changed."

Christy Karras: christykarras@gmail.com