• Charlotte, N.C., has an idea that it can lure movie production companies if it creates sound stages in what was once the city's premier shopping-center destination, Eastland Mall.
• The Queen City is going to buy the 81-acre parcel, which has been dead since big-box stores nearby and gang violence killed it in 2010.
• The city will pay $13.2 million for 1.1 million square feet of former retail space. Then it will seek developers to take on the project of building sound stages in the hopes Hollywood will come. Charlotte already has TV (Homeland") and movie ("Hunger Games," Taladega Nights") experience.

From the article:

Officials in Charlotte, N.C., are looking to an unlikely source for help with a dead mall on the city's low-income east side: Hollywood. ...