While Hollywood Slows Down, “Hollywood East” Keeps the Cameras Rolling

There’s a scene in every good underdog movie where everybody counts the hero out. The industry’s contracting, the money’s drying up, the big players are pulling back — and that’s exactly the moment the scrappy contender steps into the frame. Right now, that contender is New Jersey, and the plot twist is that while Hollywood is going through one of its periodic identity crises, the Garden State’s film business keeps gaining momentum.

Here’s the number that makes producers put down their oat-milk lattes and pay attention: New Jersey offers a 30 to 40 percent transferable tax credit on qualified production spending, with the top rate reserved for “studio partners” who lock in a major facility here for the long haul. There’s no per-project cap, and more than $100 million in credits roll out annually. Better yet, the Legislature extended the whole program through 2049 — which, in an industry that panics if it can’t see past next quarter, is practically a geological era of certainty.

Built to reward commitment

The structure is built to reward commitment. The richest incentive — 40 percent, with a possible 5 percent in bonuses on top — is aimed squarely at studio partners who take site control of a production facility of at least 250,000 square feet for a decade or more. Translation: New Jersey isn’t just trying to poach a movie for a six-week shoot and wave goodbye. It’s trying to build a permanent industry, soundstages and all, the kind that hires local grips and electricians and caterers and keeps hiring them long after the stars fly home. For fiscal year 2025, the state carved out $250 million for studio partners, another $250 million for film-lease production companies, and $300 million for everybody else.

Why it matters down here

Here’s the part that matters to us, watching all of this unfold up the Turnpike. An industry doesn’t stay penned up in Fort Monmouth or Bayonne. It spreads. Location scouts run out of new corners in North Jersey and start looking south — at the Victorian streets of Cape May, the working waterfronts, the small-town main drags in Collingswood and Haddonfield that look like a period piece without a single set dresser lifting a hammer. Every production that lands in this state is a production that might, one day, need a South Jersey diner, a South Jersey crew, a South Jersey face in the background of a shot.

The states winning this game already know the lesson: you don’t rent an industry, you plant one.Vinny Vinci

So while the trades in Los Angeles run their gloomy think-pieces about the death of the movie business, keep an eye on the road signs that say Jersey. The cameras here are still rolling. And if the story keeps breaking the way it’s been breaking, some of the best scenes in the sequel are going to be shot a whole lot closer to home than any of us grew up expecting.

Based on reporting from Jersey Digs, PwC, NJEDA, and the New Jersey Division of Taxation.