California Governor Jerry Brown has approved an extension of the California Film and Television Tax Credit Program 2.0, a program that offers tax incentives to films and TV shows filmed in the Golden State and which has been credited with keeping some major blockbusters on West Coast sets instead of transferring to other states like Georgia and Louisiana.
First signed into law in 2014, the revised tax program allocated $100 million in tax credits for projects shot in California, and in 2016, that allocation was increased to $330 million to allow for blockbusters to take part in the plan.
As a result, films like Paramount’s “Bumblebee” and Disney’s “A Wrinkle In Time” and “Captain Marvel” have been granted tax credits through the program, an important gain as Marvel, Lucasfilm, and other blockbuster makers take their projects to other shooting locations like Pinewood Studios in Atlanta and London. On the indie side, the extension will allow for further tax credits for independent and smaller-budget projects as well as additional incentives for projects that hire outside Los Angeles’ thirty-mile zone.
The Entertainment Union Coalition, which includes major Hollywood unions like SAG-AFTRA, DGA, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 399, praised the extension in a statement released Wednesday.
“As a coalition that represents working men and women of the entertainment industry, we are elated that the California film and television production tax credit program has been extended through 2025,” the statement read. “Our members are those who lose when film and television production leaves this state and they are also the direct beneficiaries when it returns to and stays in California.”
“In 2014, when we worked to enact the California Film and Television Tax Credit Program 2.0, we told the state legislature it would bring production back and reverse the dismal lack of work our members faced. Now, four years after the 2.0 program launched, more than 45,000 of our working California members have been re-employed or employed, with $ 2.3 billion in wages paid to below-the-line workers.”
Other projects that have received tax credits in the program include Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood,” Jordan Peele’s “Us,” and Seth MacFarlane’s “The Orville.”