‘We’re coming for your jobs,’ California says of Atlanta’s film industry
LOS ANGELES — In front of a room of entertainment industry professionals, Dee Dee Myers, a senior adviser to California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, had a message for Georgia.
“We love Atlanta, but we’re coming for your jobs,” Myers said last month.
She was joking, referring to the thousands of film production-related jobs that have come through Georgia within the last 10 years. Only moments earlier, she and three other panelists part of the Financial Times’ Business of Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles agreed that every state has a place in a healthy American film ecosystem.
Still, competition in landing an increasingly tightened pipeline of productions has stiffened between states this year. This summer, California upped the ante and increased the cap of its film tax incentive from $350 million to $750 million, a long-awaited upgrade that has already led to a surge in applications. In August, the state reported a 400% increase.
Georgia also improved some of the processes involved in qualifying for its credit, though these measures were not as buzzy as California’s change. It revived a standalone post-production tax credit, streamlined its auditing process to help production companies monetize their credits faster and passed a measure to speed up approvals at the state film office.
But these tweaks aren’t broadly well-known just yet. Like all other legislative changes, there has been a lag effect, said Peter Stathopoulos, a partner in Bennett Thrasher’s state and local tax practice. It may take a year or two for the broader industry to recognize them.
At the Financial Times panel, Paul Poteet, a partner with advisory firm FGS Global, mentioned two developments worth watching. U.S. trade representatives are looking into potential Section 301 investigations of foreign trading partners’ film, entertainment and TV practices, he said, which will determine if a foreign government’s policies are discriminatory or deny U.S. trade agreement benefits.
He also suggested paying attention to the Supreme Court’s review of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump earlier this year. If the tariffs are struck down, the administration could return to Congress and seek passing trade policies legislatively.
If the administration passes them through reconciliation, as they did with the Republicans’ tax and spending package known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, federal tax incentives for the entertainment industry could emerge. This could, potentially, include Trump’s calls to impose a 100% tariff on foreign-made films, though Poteet thinks it is unlikely.
Myers, responding to Poteet, said she’s found it surprising that the administration is championing the entertainment industry. It’s usually always been the Democratic members of Congress, she said.
“The president, we think of him as the real estate developer,” Myers said. “He’s also Donald Trump, the entertainer and former ‘Apprentice’ co-producer. So I think he views himself as someone in the industry, and I think he wants to do something.”
Festival season
Tickets to the Savannah College of Art and Design’s eponymous film festival are a hot commodity.
As the festival enters its 28th year, more than 1,000 students waited in line for tickets in early October, Savannah CBS affiliate WTOC reported. Some queued more than two days ahead of the ticket line opening. Students receive discounted tickets to evening screenings and free tickets to daytime events.
The SCAD Savannah Film Festival — which is the largest university-run festival in the world — has come a long way from its early days. Screenings from both professional filmmakers and students span eight days and stretch across four theaters in the city. SCAD reports more than 60,000 guests attend the festival each year.
The 2025 festival will screen 167 films and includes seven world premieres among its selection. The lineup includes Park Chan-wook’s forthcoming feature “No Other Choice,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ Emma Stone-starrer “Bugonia” (which readers of this newsletter will know filmed partially in Georgia) and Chloé Zhao’s Shakespeare romance “Hamnet.”
Some screenings are paired with Q&As and award presentations for talent involved in the film, including writer and director Benny Safdie for “The Smashing Machine,” Rian Johnson for “Wake Up Dead Man,” lead Amanda Seyfried for “The Testament of Ann Lee” and Oscar Isaac for “Frankenstein.” There are 15 professional shorts and two student shorts programs, a Jeff Buckley documentary, two Josh O’Connor films, a television sidebar and a partridge in a pear tree.
At least eight faculty, students and alumni from The University of Georgia have films and scripts at the Austin Film Festival this year. The projects include a feature film from low-residency MFA in Screenwriting graduates Cash Robinson and Caleb Samples’ “Nobody Wants to Be Here, Nobody Wants to Leave,” a feature from instructor Ann-Marie Allison starring Marisa Tomei called “You’re Dating a Narcissist!” and a web series called “Functioning” from Caroline Bonds. Another UGA graduate, Tricia Horvath, won the festival’s pitch competition last year for her short film “Stripper Moms.”
Starting a few days before the SCAD festival, Austin’s own foc
uses on writers’ creative contributions to film. Taylor Potter, another MFA graduate who produced “Stripper Moms,” says the feat exemplifies the importance of nurturing homegrown talent. This is what happens when students from Georgia universities make it out of the classroom.
“(Georgia) has the education programs, but the only people really producing things long term are these mega studios, not homegrown people,” Potter said. “This industry here, from a homegrown perspective, is stuck in development, and we really need to move forward into production.”
About the Author
Savannah Sicurella is an entertainment business reporter with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
