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Film production is down nationwide, except in New Jersey. We go inside the studios, the tax credits, and the latest billion-dollar campuses changing everything.
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00:00Netflix, Lionsgate, Paramount, three of the biggest names in entertainment, all making
00:08billion-dollar bets on the same state. And it's not California. While film and television
00:14production has slowed across most of the country, New Jersey is doing the opposite. The state's
00:20production spending jumped from $592 million in 2023 to $834 million in 2024. That's a
00:2941% surge. And crew hires doubled from $15,000 to $30,000 in a single year. Less than a
00:37month
00:37ago, The Hollywood Reporter had a big article and the headline was, production is down across
00:43the country except New Jersey. So we're booming. I never thought that I'd be in New Jersey and
00:50New Jersey would be a real production hub and here we are. In this episode of NYC Innovates,
00:56we jump across the Hudson River to discover how the birthplace of American cinema is reclaiming
01:01its crown. We'll take you inside a working soundstage, break down the financial incentives
01:07pulling Hollywood East, and hear from the team behind one of the most ambitious studio campuses
01:12in North American history. What if we could take the LA-style campus, improve on it, and bring it
01:18into this tri-state area market? Plus, what does artificial intelligence mean for the future of
01:24physical production? We've got the answers. Stay with us.
01:35Most people think Hollywood invented the movies. They're wrong. Modern filmmaking was born right here
01:42in New Jersey. Thomas Edison filed the patent for the first ever motion picture camera in 1891 while
01:48living in West Orange. He then built the world's first movie studio in his own backyard called the
01:54Black Maria and started charging filmmakers a tax to use the technology. The filmmakers back at the turn
02:01of the last century said, I'm not paying a tax. So they ran. And when they hit the Pacific Ocean,
02:06that was the furthest they could get away from Edison, right? And that's what begat Hollywood.
02:12So there's an irony, right, that taxes drove filmmakers away, and tax incentives are bringing
02:20them back again. So we've come full circle. For decades, New Jersey played second fiddle,
02:25used as a backdrop and rarely credited. The iconic Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli scene from 1972's
02:32The Godfather. Well, that was filmed at Liberty State Park. In the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete
02:38Unknown, director James Mangold relied on New Jersey for roughly 95% of the shoot. The state doubled as
02:45the West Village, Rhode Island, and even Washington, D.C. Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day played Kate
02:51May as the American Midwest. And of course, The Sopranos, perhaps the most iconic New Jersey
02:57production of all time, put the state's identity on the global map. But something bigger is happening
03:03today. The industry isn't just visiting New Jersey anymore. It's moving in. At the center of New
03:09Jersey's film renaissance is a 40-year-old institution. The New Jersey Film and Television
03:13Commission has been around for over four decades. And we're as hands-on as you want us to be. So
03:20you're a producer that's coming to the state. You can start the process by giving us your script.
03:26We'll do a breakdown for free. We'll give you a location packet loaded with photographs,
03:31contact information, address information of every location that we've got in our inventory that we
03:37think is going to service your script's creative needs. We do that for every production. It doesn't
03:41matter what your budget level is. The commission also sits at the front lines of permitting,
03:46historically one of New Jersey's biggest friction points. The state has 564 municipalities,
03:52each with its own set of rules. Listening to UPMs and line producers, and a lot of them would say,
04:00564 different towns in New Jersey, 564 different sets of rules. My head's about to explode. How do I,
04:06how do I work my way through the state trying to pull permits? And some of them would say,
04:13it's much easier to stay in New York. Wherever you go throughout the state, if you're going to a
04:17film-ready town, you know a few things. They're welcoming you with open arms. We want film
04:22production or TV production in our town. You also know that you're going to get your film permit
04:26turned around in four days, and you know what it's going to cost for a film permit.
04:31Two years ago, 22 municipalities were certified. Today, that number has grown to 65,
04:37with a goal of 90 by year's end. The commission also maintains a 90,000 image location library,
04:44a statewide crew listing database called the NJ411, and an annual industry showcase,
04:50the New Jersey Film Expo at the Meadowlands Arena. The event now draws 4,000 attendees and nearly 100
04:56vendors. Whatever your production needs, Jersey's got you covered. In 2018, Governor Murphy reinstated New
05:02Jersey's Film Tax Incentive Program, which had been dormant since 2010. This boosted qualified
05:08production spending from roughly $67 million in 2017 to $834 million in 2024. Since then,
05:18the program has been extended all the way to 2049, a runway so long it's fundamentally changed how studios
05:25plan. Tax incentives are the door opener. That's what gets productions often initially interested in
05:32coming to New Jersey. But it's all the other things that we talk about. The experienced crew. You need
05:37the variety of locations so that you're meeting all your your script's creative needs. And you need to
05:42know that the infrastructure is there. Do I have enough grip and electric? Do I have cameras? Do I
05:47have lumber mills? Do I have set design and construction? Do I have wardrobe? So when you put all
05:52those pieces of the puzzle together, that's why you start attracting business to come out here.
05:5720 minutes from Midtown Manhattan, tucked inside an industrial corridor in Kearney, New Jersey,
06:04sits one of the busiest independent soundstage facilities on the East Coast. Welcome to 10 Basin
06:10Studios. What this facility offers is 89,000 square feet of buildings, which is a combination of office
06:19space, Finnish soundstages, which are soundproof boxes, temperature controlled, powered, and they're
06:27environments that production can build sets and at any time of day or night shoot what they need to
06:32do without concern about weather or light or temperature. You're about to enter the carpentry
06:40shop, otherwise known as the mill. This is where all of the sets are built for this production.
06:46Paramount CBS is Cupertino. Sets that go and get on our stages and sets for location all source right from
06:54this room. Building a production-ready soundstage isn't just about square footage.
06:58It's multi-millions of dollars that gets put into a project like this, even with just a conversion and
07:06not doing ground up. The roofing had to be structurally reinforced to carry the weight and hold the weight of
07:11rigging equipment, lighting equipment, sets hanging from it. You need a ton of HVAC air conditioning that is
07:19used to cool all the bodies. You have hundreds of people at a time in the space. You have lots
07:25of
07:25lighting and other equipment in there running and it creates a lot of heat and you have to be able
07:29to
07:29do that silently so they can roll their cameras. So a specialized soundproof HVAC system that goes in to
07:35do that. We have a floor pad that's made up of two layers of lumber that gives them a place
07:42to rig to
07:42and softens the blow on their feet when standing for hours working on the stage. This is our main power
07:47that
07:48we brought into the building, 7200 amps of film power, and this is how we distribute it throughout
07:53the space. What you're looking at right now is our spray insulation which sound attenuates the entire
07:59space both from the inside, from ambient noise, reflective noise, and from the outside. We are here
08:05in the set dressing department. This is their storage facility where everything you see on camera in a
08:12room or a space is stored, laid out, managed, and maintained. This is wardrobe storage where all the
08:19clothing that the production cast wears gets stored. There's a lot that goes into it, a lot that a lot
08:26of people don't really think about, and a lot of nuance and a lot of time and effort. Engineering,
08:32structural, mechanical, all kinds of things that come together to make a formed film and television studio.
08:37Ten Basin currently hosts the CBS series Cupertino and has previously hosted productions including
08:43the Jennifer Lopez musical drama Kiss of the Spider Woman and the crime thriller The Rip starring
08:49Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, which spent four months on site. After 27 years building eastern effects into
08:55Brooklyn's largest independent production equipment rental house, Levy made the move across the river.
09:01The main reason why we chose Kearney, New Jersey to site our studio facility here in New Jersey
09:05is because of its proximity to Columbus Circle in Manhattan. There's a radius for Union and SAG-AFTRA
09:13that relies on an eight mile radius. We're within that eight mile radius. So being in that, Kearney
09:18falls well within that. It's the number one reason why we're here. We're very close to the city. We're
09:22very close to the Holland Tunnel. It's very good and easy access for productions that have to cross the
09:28river. The tax credit program has also reshaped the local vendor ecosystem around studios like Ten Basin.
09:35At the end of this block, we have a special industrial company that sells rigging, specialty rigging
09:43pieces that you can only get from a specialty store. They're literally at the end of our block
09:48in our campus here. You know, lumber houses, local plumbing and electrical supplies. You know,
09:55they go locally. They want it fast. They want to get it into the set. They want to get it
09:59on their
09:59production. And so it amplifies the, you know, service aspect of New Jersey and what New Jersey offers.
10:07In the shadow of the Bayonne Bridge on a 58 acre former Texaco oil refinery that sat dormant for decades,
10:14the most ambitious studio campus in the Northeast is now rising from the ground.
10:19Flynn Bousson is VP of Business Development at 1888 Studios and one of the project's driving forces since its earliest
10:27days.
10:27There was an article in The Economist back in 2000, don't quote me on the date, 2017, 2018, more or
10:34less,
10:35that said the spend on content over the next 10 years would be greater than the spend on oil and
10:39gas.
10:39And so immediately, pretty quickly, you know, realized, okay, there's an opportunity here.
10:43What does this really mean? So the article said that at the time the industry was, which is true,
10:48the industry was spending between 25 and 35 billion a year, depending on how you counted it.
10:51And they said the article was estimating that the industry would approach 75 billion a year or 750
10:58billion over the next 10 years. The article was wrong because that number is looking a little bit
11:05bigger than it was by about 50 percent. We're approaching 140 billion, 150 billion even,
11:10depending on which markets you count and what type of content you look at.
11:13His father, financier Arki Bussan, is the chairman and founder. Together, they studied every major
11:19production market. The answer kept pointing to the same place.
11:23New York was primarily made up of converted warehouses, you know, that were not purpose-built,
11:28operational issues from here to kingdom come with no parking, not clear span, not soundproof,
11:33offices on the other side, you know, 10 blocks away from where the stages were,
11:37no mill space, etc. And so we said, okay, well, what if we could take the LA-style campus,
11:44improve on it, and bring it into this tri-state area market?
11:47Their criteria was simple, 50 acres minimum within 45 minutes of Manhattan and on the water.
11:53When you're out there and you have the water on three sides, the bridge in the back,
11:57you've got the supertankers coming in and out and the Panamax ships. It's really, it's quite,
12:02it's quite an extraordinary sight. What followed was years of political groundwork.
12:06Mayor Jimmy Davis in Bayonne rezoned the site in 45 days. The New Jersey Economic Development
12:12Authority approved a $400 million Aspire tax credit award, and the city of Bayonne floated a $65 million
12:19bond. The campus design was built from direct conversations with the industry, line producers,
12:26directors, operations teams, and talent. The result is a 1.6 million square foot campus paying homage to
12:33the art deco era of golden age Hollywood, updated for the demands of modern production.
12:38It's going to be 23 sound stages, ranging from smaller 18,000 foot stages up to 20s,
12:4425,000s, and up to what will be the largest stage on the East Coast at 60,000 square feet.
12:49And I think it's about 340,000 square feet of mill space as well, which is another amenity,
12:54which normally when, you know, studios are getting built, they have mills. And then eventually,
12:58especially out in LA, when space becomes a problem, because all of these lots were built 100 years
13:02ago, mills are the first thing to go because they said, Oh, we'll just do it off site, we'll do
13:06it
13:06off site, which is fine from a top co level, if I can call it this way. But when you're
13:10a production
13:10company, and when you're trying to make a movie, it's really annoying to have to build everything
13:13off site and then truck it in. And there's more cost and there's more logistical nightmare. So
13:18that's that we also have 10 acres of open space base camp, which is again, a very unique
13:22amenities. So we have space for over 425 trucks on the campus for each stage has its own designated
13:28base camp. So you'll be able to have the every production can have their trucks, the trucks can
13:32actually stage there, which is not allowed in New York anywhere, really, we've got an on site parking
13:37garage as well, where every crew member, every talent in front behind sideways everywhere,
13:42we'll be able to park, then there's the water, a 20 acre water backlog on the west side of the
13:47campus,
13:48and that's leftover. So the site was owned by Chevron and Texaco. And so because of
13:52the way that title and transfers worked back at the time when they bought it in the early 1900s,
13:58you were actually able to purchase land in the water, which does you can't do today. But that
14:05parcel has moved with the title of the property ever since because there was only one owner. And so when
14:09we purchased purchase the land, we were able to keep that same titled structure intact. So we actually
14:15own that 20 acres. So what that means for productions is they're able to shoot, they'll be able to extend
14:20the back lot, the back lot that we have, we can put barges out there, they can build sets out
14:24there,
14:24they can shoot from the water back to the land, they can shoot from the land back out to the
14:28water.
14:28And then came Paramount, the anchor tenant that changed everything, a minimum 10 year lease
14:33covering more than 285,000 square feet. Because of our size, is able to host both a studio partner,
14:41which is the sort of long term tenancy, which we have in Paramount, as well as having enough square
14:47footage to support our own designation, under the film lease under the film lease program with the
14:51tax credits, which means that we can actually offer, and we're the only facility today that can do this,
14:56we can actually offer the increased incentives to any production that wants to shoot in the state,
15:01as opposed to, you know, if they go out and shoot in a field, or you go out and shoot
15:05on location,
15:06and you're not shooting at 1888, those same incentives are simply not available. And the
15:11state did that in a very wise and very smart way, where they said, No, we want to make sure
15:14we're
15:14giving incredibly lucrative credits. But we want to make sure that it's reserved only for those that
15:18make a true infrastructure commitment in the state. And we want to make sure that they're here to stay.
15:23According to Variety, 1888 Studios is expected to be operational by the fourth quarter of 2028.
15:31Netflix in Fort Monmouth, Lionsgate in Newark, some might see competition, but the people building
15:37this industry see something else entirely. It's all part of the same ecosystem. And New Jersey today
15:42doesn't really have the infrastructure or the ecosystem infrastructure to support the amount
15:46of filming that people want to do. We've got the crews, we've got the talent, we've got the, you know,
15:51creatives both in front and behind the camera and everybody else on the side, but we don't have the
15:55actual infrastructure. So it's very much a rising tide lifts all boats. And of course, the support of
16:00our friends at Netflix and Lionsgate just further validate the state and further validate the mission.
16:04While New Jersey builds its workforce, one question is following the industry
16:09everywhere it goes. What happens when artificial intelligence enters the frame?
16:14Earlier this year, Google invested $75 million in A24 to develop AI-powered filmmaking tools in
16:21partnership with DeepMind. It's a deal that raises a pointed question for everyone betting on physical
16:27production infrastructure. Is AI a threat or an accelerant?
16:31The more that we speak to the industry, effectively what's happening with the AI side is it's
16:35accelerating the post-production and visual effects side, as well as some of the interior
16:42spatial design concepts associated with motion capture and volume capture, where you're effectively
16:46able to infill, you know, screens and everything else a lot quicker and a lot more efficiently.
16:51I think the thing that's maintained very clearly by everyone I've ever spoken to, and I really mean
16:56everybody I've ever spoken to, is that human beings want to watch human being generated content.
17:02What I've seen is that through this technology, it's actually pushing people back into stages
17:07more, because what it means is that as the technologies around filmmaking, like volume capture,
17:14like a motion capture, like some of the VFX and other pieces advance, it's making more and more
17:21sense to have an actor inside a controlled space, because that's really the key thing that everyone
17:26keeps telling me is that we need more controlled space because we're now doing more and more shots
17:30that are sort of computer generated. And so it's a lot easier instead of sending an actor, for example,
17:35to the desert plus a 400 person film crew and trying to shoot and make sure the lighting is exactly
17:41right. And the noises and the birds and the wind, they're now able to get effectively that same
17:46shot, but do it within a controlled environment, which is a soundstage, and be able to infill it a
17:52lot more of an efficient price for a production. The way that the technology is going is it's
17:56really going to become supplementary to the physical capturing of human beings on screen.
18:01And it's going to automate a lot of the processes behind the scenes, but it's never going to remove
18:06sort of that human touch element. And in order to get that right human touch element,
18:10that controlled environment is the most important thing. People are going to use,
18:14I think they're going to use soundstages more, and they're going to, you know,
18:17our electricity bill is going to go even higher than we estimated.
18:20New Jersey is projected to become the third largest state for film and TV production in 2026,
18:27behind only New York and Los Angeles. So is Hollywood East the new state slogan?
18:32I worked out in California and L.A. as a local 728 electrician in the union,
18:38and spent time there. And it's a very different world. You know, I'm born and raised in Livingston,
18:45New Jersey, New Jersey native. And the Northeast is a very different animal. It has a different
18:51vibe. The people are a bit different. And the product that comes from here is different. So
18:57I don't compare the two. I think we both do what we do extremely well. They're the two top markets
19:02in
19:03the world. And we're proud to be here and proud to be supporting film and television.
19:07Someone called it Atlanta of the North. And I said, that's completely unacceptable. We're
19:10Hollywood East. So don't even try with that label. And I'm really happy you said that rather than
19:15Atlanta North, because as far as I'm concerned, we're looking at our friends on the other side of
19:19the coast much, much, you know, much closer than we are looking at our friends down south.
19:23You will never, ever hear me say New Jersey is Hollywood East. Never. We started the film
19:31industry here. I say, I will posit this theory to you, Cheddar, that Hollywood is New Jersey West.
19:40So tell us, do you believe New Jersey is the future of American filmmaking,
19:45or is Hollywood still king? Let us know in the comments below. For Cheddar, I'm Chris Castellino.
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