How America can bring film and television production home

In the classic Western “Shane,” Joey Starrett hears a hard lesson about Rufus Ryker’s ruthless campaign against the homesteaders: “It’s the same old story … and you can’t learn that lesson but once.”

Today, that story is economic and cinematic. And America has learned this lesson more than once: If you take an industry for granted, its jobs, revenue and know-how move overseas and don’t come back.

Film and television production, an export industry with a $9 billion trade surplus, risks following the same script. Forty-five percent of U.S. films and scripted television shows were shot abroad in 2025, up from about one-third three years earlier. That is not just a scene change. It is skilled work, artistry and investment leaving the U.S.

States have responded aggressively. Georgia provides a revealing close-up. It built a robust production hub with incentives of up to 30 percent, attracting billions in spending, building soundstages, and developing a talented workforce. Marvel spent more than $3 billion in Georgia over nearly a decade, including “Black Panther” and two “Avengers” movies. It later shifted much of that work to the United Kingdom, where national incentives changed the math.

Georgia did what it was supposed to do. It built a formidable screen industry. But a state is not a country. States can influence where projects land; they cannot alone ensure those projects stay in the U.S. That is why the newly introduced Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act aims to create a federal tax incentive to work alongside state programs.

A federal film incentive should be simple, targeted and........

© The Hill