President-elect Donald Trump has named Jon Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone as Hollywood’s “special ambassadors,” with the aim of boosting domestic production of film and TV shows as the entertainment industry increasingly opts to shoot in other countries.
“They will serve as Special Envoys to me for the purpose of bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries, BACK—BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!” Trump wrote on Thursday in a Truth Social post. “These three very talented people will be my eyes and ears, and I will get done what they suggest. It will again be, like The United States of America itself, The Golden Age of Hollywood!”
The message signals that Trump may intervene in the flight of production away from the country and to other locations with more generous tax incentives for film and TV shows. Other countries, including the U.K., Canada and Australia, have steadily been beefing up their programs aimed at luring Hollywood productions.
One solution could be a federal production tax incentive, which several industry trade groups have been lobbying for in recent years.
It remains unknown specifically what the actors’ roles will be in boosting production in the country.
The announcement follows Gov. Gavin Newsom signing a budget earlier this month that more than doubles the amount of tax credits California, the heartland of Hollywood, gives to film and TV shows from $330 million to $750 million per year. The expansion will shower as much as $3.75 billion in tax credits to the industry over five years starting in 2025. The subsidy will be the most generous offered by any state except Georgia, which doesn’t have a ceiling on the amount it gives to productions per year.
In recent years, the U.K. has emerged as one of the principal destinations for feature films. Movies that shot there last year include Jurassic World 4 (Amblin Entertainment, Universal Pictures), the next Mission: Impossible installment (Paramount), The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Disney) and Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (T-Street Pictures, Netflix). Its tax incentive program is designed to allow those productions see a cash rebate on salaries for Scarlett Johansson, Tom Cruise, Pedro Pascal and Daniel Craig, among others, provided those costs are incurred in the U.K. The country has a very broad definition for qualifying expenditures, allowing payments to non-U.K. residents to be considered when calculating incentives, though the tax relief is capped at 80 percent of costs.
Canada and Australia, meanwhile, have become hotspots for visual effects and postproduction work, with both countries offering over 30 percent back.
States have aimed to compete for Hollywood dollars by making their production tax credit programs more attractive. Last year, Illinois passed revisions to allow game, national talk and contest-based shows, among other reality TV, to qualify for tax incentives.
If the government passes a federal tax incentive, productions would likely be able to stack that credit with state subsidies.