Construction is slowing down around Boston and across the Bay State after an historic boom.

You can wave goodbye to grandiose plans for skyline topping towers, until the next boom that is.

But there are two things I wouldn’t bet against, especially in a downturn: Hollywood and casinos.

As the office tower builders pack it in, another crop of developers is waiting in the wings. One group wants to make Massachusetts Hollywood East. The other would like to bring Las Vegas, or at least a replica or two of Foxwoods, to the state.

And as the general economy tanks, the fortunes of aspiring movie studio chiefs and would-be casino builders is likely to rise.

Let’s start with the movie business.

Tim Pappas, an amateur film producer and South Boston condo builder, is pushing ahead with his ambitious plan for a movie production complex in South Boston.

After having briefed City Hall on his plans, he is now preparing to take his plans to the South Boston neighborhood for a crucial community hearing on his plans, state Rep. Brian Wallace (D-South Boston) told me.

In the works is a sizeable movie production complex, with at least a couple sound stages and the opportunity to expand as business grows. One of South Boston’s more prolific developers, Pappas is looking to build on a vacant lot he owns at the corner of West First and E streets.

Wallace said Pappas’ plans are especially refreshing after a steady stream of meetings with developers whose plans to build in once–booming Southie have stalled.

“He is planning a good–sized project,” Wallace said. “He has the money.”

Not alone, former top Paramount executive David Kirkpatrick is forging ahead with his plans for a sprawling, $300 million-plus movie complex in Plymouth.

Both projects, however, are better bets than office buildings or, even worse, another luxury condo project.

It’s hard to see demand growing anytime soon for more office space, especially with a likely round of layoffs coming after the market madness starts to hit home.

But hard times have traditionally been a boon to the movie industry. The 1930s were a golden age for Hollywood as millions sought escape from the harsh realities of Depression-era life in darkened theaters.

The same logic should eventually help would-be casino developers, though that industry has seen its own revenues decline amid the economic downturn.

Still, some of that fall-off has been tied to high gas prices. Gamblers have been turning to slot machine halls closer to home, such as Rhode Island’s Twin Rivers, over Connecticut’s more distant casinos.

Imagine, then, what kind of business a casino at Suffolk Downs in East Boston, or out on Interstate 495, might do?

Whatever the case, there are at least four different prospective casino developers quietly at work across Eastern Massachusetts.

It’s a lineup that includes Sheldon Adelson, the Dorchester boy who heads one of the world’s largest gaming companies, Las Vegas Sands, and veteran casino developer Richard Fields, the lead investor at the Suffolk Downs racetrack. Other groups are taking out options on land in New Bedford, Palmer and in the Milford area.

It may be hard to get the financing to build a mega resort given the meltdown on Wall Street, but a slimmed down casino might fit the current market just right, said one developer exploring plans for a Massachusetts casino.

And the casino crowd is betting that recalcitrant Bay State lawmakers, with state finances now in freefall, will finally see the light and roll the dice.

“Everything tells you if you don’t put a proposal together now, you are a making a big mistake,” the would-be developer said.

Back when times were better, the anti-sin-and-fun crowd was busy dismissing the idea of casinos and movie studios in the boring old Bay State.

Bills to provide tax credits to help a proposed, $300 million-plus studio complex to get off the ground in South Weymouth were slammed as a bad deal for the public.

Casinos were derided by State House jobs as bad bets as well.

While that was just a few months ago, it is also now a world and a stock market crash away.

And with jobless rates rising and construction sites silent, neither idea looks so bad right now.