SCOOP: Federal Incentive Bill Could Come Next Week

Less than three weeks after President Donald Trump floated the idea of a federal film and TV tax incentive, a bill could be introduced as soon as next week, according to three sources familiar with the matter. Some expressed optimism that it could pass into law by year’s end. 

The co-leads of the bill are likely to be U.S. Representatives Laura Friedman and Linda Sánchez (both California Democrats), and Republicans Brian Jack (Georgia) and Nathaniel Moran (Texas).

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, entertainment-guild leaders and Trump’s specially appointed Hollywood ambassador Jon Voight held a press conference earlier this week to tout a new Motion Picture Association study, which found that a federal film and TV tax incentive could increase American production to 65 percent of global production, up from the current 39 percent, and create more than 143,500 full-time jobs annually. Reps. Friedman and Jack co-hosted the conference with the U.S. Film and Television Production Coalition, a group that includes Voight, SAG-AFTRA, the Directors Guild of America and the Teamsters. Friedman’s district includes the studio-rich cities of Glendale and Burbank. Jack’s district includes Trilith Studios, once a longtime Marvel production hub. 

“This is a jobs bill,” said MPA chief Charlie Rivkin on Tuesday. “When… any major motion picture, films in the United States, it injects about $1.3 million a day into the local economy.”

The idea of a federal film and TV tax incentive came to the fore on Aug. 31, when Trump boosted the idea in a Truth Social post after meeting with Voight. 

“The amount of money spent on Tax Incentives will be made up tenfold by the money pouring into the Treasury’s coffers,” Trump wrote. “Meetings are being set up with the Leaders of both Parties in order to get this done.” 

Many of the legislators and guild leaders involved have spent the better part of two years rallying support for a federal incentive.

“The best time to have done this would have been maybe four years ago, five years ago,” said Friedman during the presser. “The second-best time would be tomorrow.”

The contours of the bill are still unclear, and Friedman said Tuesday that it was still being drafted, but it likely consists of a 20 percent incentive, as Variety previously reported. 

The flurry of activity around a federal incentive peaked this week, with Hollywood’s studio chiefs — a group reportedly including Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley, as well as, I hear, Disney’s Alan Bergman — marching down the halls of Congress to stump for a federal incentive. 

Separately, Reps. Friedman and Jack, alongside Moran and Sánchez, Nicole Malliotakis (R., N.Y.), and Tom Suozzi (D, N.Y.), announced this week the founding of the Congressional American Film & TV Production Caucus, a bipartisan group that aims to ramp up film production in the U.S.