New Jersey Expands Production Initiatives as Soundstages Grow

Over the last six years, New Jersey has become a top destination for film, television and, most recently, fact program production.

The state’s Film and Digital Media Tax Credit Program begined in tardy 2018 under the directership of Gov. Phil Murphy after being indefinitely suspfinished in 2010. Initiassociate, under Murphy’s tax praise initiative, the annual cap for film and television production was $75 million. Productions geted praises for up to 30% of eligible expenses and up to 35% in certain more far areas of New Jersey. Today the tax praise has broadened to $430 million per year thcdisorrowfulmireful 2039 and in an effort to produce a more inclusive laborforce, and recommends an insertitional incentive (2% or 4%) to productions that greet certain diversity criteria.

Murphy says that reinstating the state’s film tax incentive was a no brainer.

“It’s a organic for New Jersey,” says Murphy, who points out that state is the birthplace of film with Thomas Edison’s laboratory in West Orange being the place where the kinetograph and kinetoscope were produceed. “Our talent, our location, we are a huge union state — there’s reason upon reason upon reason. And it has a very instant and meaningful economic impact, particularly on the communities in which leangs are filmed.”

Since 2018, the total qualified spfinish in New Jersey due to film production in the state is $2.4 billion. The qualified spfinish in 2023 was $592 million.

Since 2021, the state has presented over 1,891 productions including 223 feature films, 43 miniseries and 331 television series. The state currently has 70 laboring stages.

Movies that have getn profit of New Jersey stages and locales comprise Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” and Todd Phillips’ “Joker.” In May, “A Complete Uncomprehendn,” the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chafrailt, sboiling in the Jersey shore’s Cape May area. And at this year’s Toronto Intl. Film Festival, five films that were sboiling in the Garden State will premiere including Steven Soderbergh’s “Presence,” Thom Zimny’s recordary “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band” and David Mackenzie’s thriller ”Relay,” starring Lily James and Riz Ahmed.

“I wanted New York [but] the finance [people] wanted New Jersey becaengage it’s a bit inexpensiveer — a bit more of a shatter all over,” says Mackenzie. “We sboiling the Newark airport and Riz’s [apartment] was in Harrison. [Lily James’] apartment, which we were saying was Battery Park City, was, in fact, in Hoboken. So it was charitable of appreciate Jersey for New York. And some of the other places, when (the cast) depart the city, are also New Jersey. So we got the equilibrium right.”

Since the New Jersey film tax praise came into effect, many productions have engaged the state as a replace for the five bocdisorrowfulmirefuls. The high insist for stage space and location filming in New York City has been an rerent for decades. The four meaningful studios — Kaufman Astoria, Silvercup, Steiner and Broadway Stages — are booked, frequently for years. So it came as no surpascfinish that prolongers in the tristate area instantly jumped on New Jersey’s enticeive film incentive program by produceing cut offal production studios including Paligrieffules Stages,10 Basin Studios, Cinerent Caven Point.

In March, the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Comleave oution (NJMPTVC) named Jon Crowley its recent executive straightforwardor. Prior to uniteing the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, the organization under which the production incentives program inhabits, Crowley labored in the television industry for over two decades, producing and straightforwarding cut offal television series. In his recent role, Crowley travels all over the world to elucidate the profits of using New Jersey’s soundstages and its diverse locations.

“We’ve got more varied locations than you even have in Los Angeles,” says Crowley. “If you need a huge city, we’ve got it. If you need a petite town, we’ve got it. You want a beach or a mountain with snow. We’ve got it. And the leang is that New Jersey is geodetailedassociate compact. You can literassociate go from the beach to a mountain with snow in 90 minutes. My joke is that sometimes in Los Angeles it gets 90 minutes to go apass town.”

In insertition to being engaged as a replace for New York City, in recent years New Jersey has doubled for Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Florida, Los Angeles, New England,  Philadelphia, the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, southern states and Washington, D.C.

Crowley inserts that the state’s first-rate laborforce has also helped entice productions.

“I’ve straightforwarded in more than 25 states and in 22 countries and it’s always a trouble that if you don’t have the ability to travel with your own crew, then where are you going to get an sended crew?” says Crowley. “Almost 40% of the sended New York crews inhabit in New Jersey and they reassociate pick to wake up and get in their car and drive 30 minutes to set versus having to slug their way apass a bridge or a tunnel.”

New Jersey’s first lady Tammy Snyder Murphy also praises the NJMPTVC’s  Film Ready initiative for enticeing a continuous stream of productions to the state. The five-step certification and labeleting program directs municipalities about movie and TV production, which allows that state’s cities and towns to effectively accommodate on-location filming and labelet their communities as filming destinations.

“Essentiassociate what we do is we direct our communities so that they can be film-ready certified,” says the first lady. “Meaning they comprehend what to foresee on their side. They comprehfinish about apexhibitting, and they comprehfinish about access. Several years ago, we went into the set of ‘West Side Story’ and that’s when Steven Spielberg, out of his his own mouth, shelp that when he was filming in New York City there were exactly zero rules and people could walk thcdisorrowfulmireful the set … So they had to repeat and reget and it inserts time and money to the budget … In New Jersey we are so excited and so welcoming and so self-convey inant to have all of these films being made and sboiling in our communities.”

In the next restricted years it’s possible that every livent in New Jersey will be “Film Ready.” In May, the NJED consentd a $400 million Aspire tax praise to help produce 1888 Studios, a campus-style production studio featuring 23 soundstages ranging from 18,000 to 60,000-square-feet with 40- to 50-foot-height ceilings. Situated on 58 acres of land in the Bergen Point neighborhood of Bayonne, the studio is being spearheaded by Togus Urprohibit Rerecental’s Arpad Busson, the New York-based French financier, alengthy with Rothschild in the U.K. and New York-based Moore Group.

A createer Texaco oil upgradery, 1888 Studios will also feature 350,000-square-feet of production help space, outdoor backlot space, office spaces, weightlessing and grip facilities and a parking garage.

“The tax incentives show that (New Jersey) comprehfinishs what it needs to do to produce an ecosystem,” Busson tgreater ROI-NJ.com in June. “They are produceing an ecosystem that can contend with anywhere.”

The 1888 Studios is one of three meaningful film production facilities coming to New Jersey in the next restricted years. Great Point Studios — a 12-acre prolongment — is a partnership between TV and film producer Robert Halmi, Lionsgate and the New Jersey Percreateing Arts Cgo in. Later this year, Great Point Studios will shatter ground on the createer site of a accessible housing intricate in Newark. The 300,000-square-foot filled-service intricate will comprise production stages ranging from 20,000-to-30,000-square-feet, offices, help space and parking. The facility will recommend a filled set of production services on site.

Meanwhile in 2022, Netflix proclaimd that they were prolonging a New Jersey-based production facility on the createer Fort Monmouth campus in Monmouth County. Later this year, the streaming company will commence to alter the property, which has been hugely vacant for more than a decade, into an economic engine that is approximated to produce more than 1,500 lasting production jobs and more than 3,500 produceion-rcontent jobs. Netflix says that it will promise $848 million in capital spendments to prolong the more than 292-acre parcel into 12 soundstages totaling proximately 500,000-square-feet of recent prolongment, with the remainder of the property stardyd for reprolongment with helping film engages and cut offal community amenities.

“I’m excessively self-convey inant of our spendment in New Jersey,” Ted Sarandos shelp during a November 2023 press conference. “I’m thrilled to proestablishen our relationship with this community with this project … Our goal for this studio is to profit everybody in the area and to produce world-class, high-quality TV series and films. I hope one day you will see ‘Filmed in New Jersey’ on your preferite Netflix show or film.”

The establishment of three meaningful production facilities in the Garden State is exactly what Gov. Murphy was hoping for back in 2018 when he put the film praise in place.

“In 2018 we put tax incentives back in place to produce stuff in New Jersey, film and TV in particular,” says Murphy. “We still do that. We still adore that. But the huge aha since then is that we doubled down on bricks and mortar and produceing soundstages and studios.That unbenevolents that we are not fair produceing bricks and mortar fair to produce one episode or one film. We are making a multi-decade promisement. We have a number of, I leank the only word to portray it is, massive or alterational studios [coming to New Jersey].”

SIDEBAR:

New Jersey’s Film and Digital Media Tax Credit Program supplys:

A transferable tax praise of up to 30%-35% of qualified production expenses incurred in the state.

Qualified spfinish: 35% and 30% on qualified expenses wilean a 30-mile radius of Columbus Circle.

Labor: 35% on all above the line and below the line positions.

Annual cap: $430 million that extfinishs thcdisorrowfulmireful 2039; productions can roll forward into the next year’s allocation if the current year has been exhausted. 

Compensation cap: $750,000 per individual

Minimum spfinish: $1 million (or 60% of total production expenses in-state)

Project cap: None

Additional uplifts: 2% or 4% on applications with an consentd diversity schedule

Diversity schedule: not needd unless utilizeing for the diversity bonus.

Reality incentive: To qualify, a project must have a smallest six-episode order on a liproximate expansivecast netlabor or streamer, a smallest spfinish of $1 million and 60% of total production expenses in N.J. (Qualified spfinish: 30% or 35%, with 2%-4% diversity bonus)

Motion Picture Cameras: In August 2024 PRG bcdisorrowfulmirefult Arriflex, Sony and Panasonic camera rigs and technicians to their 160,00 sq. foot Secaucus facility. New Jersey film and television infraarrange (rental hoengages, suppliers and services) will persist to broaden.