Netflix, Paramount, and Lionsgate are all planting flags in New Jersey — and it starts with the best tax deal in the business.
If you regularly visit New York City, you’ve likely had to reroute your lunchtime walk because of TV or movie shoots. It’s a staple of life in the Big Apple. My hometown, Trenton, N.J., got to experience that slice of Hollywood production when Netflix‘s A House of Dynamite, starring Idris Elba and directed by Kathryn Bigelow, filmed on location in the Capital City back in 2024. Residents took to Facebook to post about Downtown Trenton residents getting photos with the cast and crew, marveling at the political thriller that used the New Jersey State House as a stand-in for the Pentagon. Two years later, a trio of production companies (and New Jersey’s incentive program) is actively turning the Garden State into the hub of Hollywood East.
New Jersey is working to solve a problem the entire U.S. film industry is experiencing. The production of movies and TV in the U.S. has been down 20% year over year. And this is after many productions had already moved out of Los Angeles to film in Georgia or Canada to save money. You may remember Trump barking about 100% taxes on movies made outside of the United States last September; how you’d even implement a 100% tax on a movie is anyone’s guess, but it was in response to companies choosing to make movies outside of America to keep costs low, which works for them but has had an obvious impact on the business of making Hollywood movies in Hollywood.
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One way states can help drive TV and movie production back to the United States is by offering tax incentives for local productions. Being able to have celebrities in your state is cool, but the real pull should be the impact on the local economy. These productions can regularly balloon to hundreds of millions of dollars, which means jobs for local workers and more shine on the state as a whole, with the hope of repeat work in the state if productions go smoothly. To further entice Hollywood to work in the state, New Jersey created a special film and TV tax incentive program, with New Jersey-based productions receiving 30% to 35% in tax breaks and incentives. A special partnership program allowed three studios additional tax breaks for making infrastructure commitments within the state. “New Jersey’s incentive program is the blueprint for any state that wants to succeed,” Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos says, remarking on how the program is “as close to the U.K. as anyone.”
In May 2025, Netflix broke ground on Netflix Studios Fort Monmouth, the $1 billion renovation of a former Army base into a 12-stage facility, complete with dressing rooms and makeup. Sarandos commented on how, over a four-year period, Netflix had “contributed $125 billion to the U.S. economy and hired more than 140,000 cast and crew members. And we’re excited to continue our investment in the U.S. and New Jersey in the coming years.” Earlier this year, Netflix moved seven projects it was working on in the U.K. to New Jersey.
That following October, Paramount—the company that outbid Netflix to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery—announced its 10-year lease on 1888 Studios in Bayonne, N.J. It was noted early that, through this move, “Paramount will be eligible to receive a tax credit of up to 40% for movies and TV shows filmed in the state if its application is approved.”
“Thanks to highly competitive tax credit programs like New Jersey’s,” explained Paramount CSO and COO Andy Gordon, “the tri-state area is more attractive than ever before for production.” Paramount would be the “anchor tenant” of the massive complex, which houses 23 stages, space for postproduction.
The third company is Lionsgate, which has its own facility, dubbed Lionsgate Newark Studios, in development. Construction on the TV and movie production facility began in December 2025, with plans to open in 2027. Then-governor Phil Murphy called the project “more than just a film studio; it is a profound commitment to the future of Newark and to the future of the film industry in New Jersey,” a move he hoped would be a catalyst that would “drive economic growth by creating thousands of new jobs, supporting local businesses, and bringing meaningful investments to the community.”
The result? Hollywood East is in full effect, and moviegoers will soon see the fruits of this labor on the silver screen. Steven Spielberg’s upcoming Disclosure Day had scenes filmed in Montvale, N.J., while Peter Farrelly’s Sylvester Stallone biopic I Play Rocky had scenes filmed at a supermarket in Keansburg, N.J. And why did they film in Keansburg?
“In a normal world,” producer Toby Emmerich told The Hollywood Reporter, “we would have shot [I Play Rocky] in New York and Pennsylvania. We ended up shooting it in New Jersey because they had the best tax deal, and that tends to be where I feel like we’re just chasing tax deals around the globe a lot of the time.”
No need to bounce to Canada or England when the good ol’ Garden State is here, the land of pork roll, the Shore and those sweet, sweet tax breaks.
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