{"id":657185,"date":"2026-11-11T01:24:12","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T01:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/657185\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T01:24:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T01:24:12","slug":"we-need-to-bring-tom-cruise-home-us-film-incentive-pitched-at-afm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/657185\/","title":{"rendered":"We Need to Bring Tom Cruise Home: US Film Incentive Pitched At AFM"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTom Cruise may not have much of a presence at the American Film Market<\/a>, more accustomed to selling movies with considerably lower budgets than those the star is used to. But on the opening day of the 2026 edition his name was casually dropped as part of a major pitch for the much-discussed federal tax incentive. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe initiative, which many in the industry hope will help turn around a major slump in terms of U.S.-shot productions, took center stage at the AFM<\/a> on day one, which launched with uncharacteristic levels of optimism, at least for Hollywood (and assuming the bill is approved). <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cStar salaries is a key issue, because what we\u2019re looking to do is bring back the biggest movies with the biggest amount of jobs attached to them,\u201d said the MPA\u2019s SVP of federal government affairs Josh Rogin. \u201cSo when Tom Cruise does a movie in France, all those jobs become French jobs. All the taxes he pays, he pays it to the French government. Our current system is actually supporting runaway productions in this way. We need to bring Tom Cruise home to make movies here!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRogin was speaking on the first panel of the AFM alongside Stephen Paul, chair and CEO of SP Media Group, and SP Media Group president Scott Karol, who both met with President Donald Trump at the White House earlier this year \u2014\u00a0alongside \u201cspecial ambassador\u201d to Hollywood Jon Voight \u2014\u00a0to discuss the proposed incentive. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the exact details of the Oval Office meeting were kept under wraps, Paul did discuss the letter read to Trump by Voight that they had all worked on. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt explained everything about the industry, explaining about how we\u2019ve not only lost movies from around the world, but we\u2019re losing the effect of America on the rest of the world,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause when we don\u2019t make films here in America, people aren\u2019t seeing that around the world. We\u2019re faking it. We\u2019re saying, \u2018Oh, this is America,\u2019 but filming it in England or filming in New Zealand. People all around the world have wanted to come to America because of the films that they have seen and television that have filmed in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs has been previously reported, Paul told Trump about a film he was developing about another U.S. president, RIchard Nixon. \u201cI said, Mr. President, I\u2019m ashamed about what I\u2019m about to tell you, but I\u2019m about to make a film about a president of the United States that I\u2019m going to film in England because I can\u2019t afford to film it here.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to Paul, when he asked Trump if he thought that \u201cwas right,\u201d he said \u201cNo,\u201d prompting Karol to show him all the information about how the federal tax credit would help. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe efforts seemingly worked, with Trump later posting on Truth Social that \u201cCongress should approve, immediately, a Federal Production Incentive to create Entertainment Jobs in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut there\u2019s now renewed urgency to get the bill passed\u00a0\u2014\u00a0with the speakers pointing towards an end-of-year deadline. In terms of the logistics of film development, Karol said it was important for producers so they could give a Jan. 1 2027 start-of-production date \u2014\u00a0enabling their films to qualify. But he added that there were fresh concerns following the U.S. midterms.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBecause who the hell knows what\u2019s going to happen next year when Democrats come in and we hit the House and Senate and Trump\u2019s upset because he\u2019s a lame duck president \u2014\u00a0we don\u2019t want that,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn terms of the impact of the incentive, Rogin laid it out starkly in terms that AFM\u2019s array of international visitors would understand. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA federal incentive would change the entire nature of our domestic film and TV industry. Right now, we are about 39% of the market we produce in America for this audience. We used to be at 60% just a few years ago,\u201d he said. \u201cCurrently, America is in last place in federal incentives. We\u2019re dead last. We have none. So there are dozens and dozens of countries that have created competitive tax requirements that draw our production overseas. We don\u2019t need to take the best incentive, we just need to be competitive.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tom Cruise may not have much of a presence at the American Film Market, more accustomed to selling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[67876,44712,430,156,321998,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-657185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-afm","tag-american-film-market","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-federal-film-incentive","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}