LAS VEGAS — San Francisco based Kink.com on Wednesday said that it had leased production and office space in Las Vegas and has already wrapped production on its first two movies.
Kink founder Peter Acworth said the crew encountered no issues, paving the way for the fetish studio to move additional production out of its San Francisco Armory headquarters, should the controversial AB 1576 condom bill pass the California state Senate next month.
“Vegas is looking more and more attractive as time goes by,” Acworth said. “The cost of doing business out there is lower. The resources are slowly moving there. It’s becoming easier and easier to do business.
"I think that a lot of companies are doing what we’re doing," he said. "They’re setting up satellite offices and getting their feet wet with Vegas as a potential place to shoot.”
About a dozen companies, including Brazzers, have a "firmly established presence in Vegas," Acworth said.
Others, including many in Los Angeles County, have been shooting in Las Vegas temporarily in the wake of 2012’s Measure B condom law, he noted.
The studio founder who started up the company in 1997 said that Kink’s move comes as AB 1576, a bill that would make it a crime to shoot adult film without a condom, advances in the California Legislature.
While Nevada requires condoms for prostitution, because of contact with the untested general public, it has no such requirements for adult film, where all participants are regularly tested for STIs, he said.
AB 1576 has been "vehemently opposed by both producers and performers, who complain that the bill strips them of important health protections, and will ultimately drive production underground, resulting in less safe working conditions," he said.
“We don’t want to move out of California,” Acworth said. “But we will if we have to. This bill not only denies performers' choice, it would effectively render most existing adult film production illegal.”
A video interview with Acworth about the Las Vegas shoot is available on BehindKink's YouTube channel.
