Congress Wants to Bring Hollywood Home: The Bipartisan Film Tax Credit Bill, Explained

WASHINGTON

Here's a sentence nobody expected to read: Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Ilhan Omar, Tim Scott, Donald Trump, and Jon Voight all want the same bill to pass. That's the Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act, and its mission is simple — stop the exodus of film and TV production from the United States.

The U.S. TV and film industry has been hemorrhaging work for years as production companies and movie studios flee to places like Europe and Canada for friendlier tax regimes, as Fox News Digital reported in its deep dive this week. Congress is now scrambling to stop one of the country's most iconic industries from taking thousands of jobs overseas — and the president, who called Hollywood a "total disaster" after meeting with Voight, is on board.

What the bill actually does

The details, per the bill text and Congressional analyses, are genuinely substantial. For the first time in U.S. history, there would be a federal film tax incentive — a 20% base credit on qualified labor expenses for feature films, TV pilots, and TV seasons costing more than $1 million, with at least 75% of principal photography days in the United States.

The bill's biggest feature, per TheWrap's industry analysis, is the inclusion of above-the-line talent salaries in the labor costs that count toward the 20% base rate. That's the clause that makes the U.S. competitive with the United Kingdom and Canada — the countries whose incentives pulled blockbusters like "Barbie" and "Deadpool & Wolverine" across the border. Like those countries, the U.S. credit would stack on top of incentives from the 31 states that already have them on the books.

From there, productions can earn four separate 5% uplifts to a 30% maximum: shoot at least 30% of principal photography days in a rural qualified opportunity zone or a federally declared disaster area; produce the project independently; spend at least $10 million in qualified wages across 10 or more states; or increase domestic production relative to the studio's historical foreign base. Post-production and visual effects work qualify too, as long as at least 75% of those costs are incurred domestically — a huge deal for the VFX sector. The credit is transferable, so independent producers who don't owe enough federal tax can sell it for cash up front.

And here's a fun quirk TheWrap flagged: because L.A. County was named a federal disaster area in 2025 after the Palisades and Altadena wildfires — a designation that holds until 2030 — any production shooting in Los Angeles over the next several years qualifies for the disaster-area uplift. The one city Trump called a "total disaster" gets an automatic bonus. You can't write this stuff.

The Jon Voight pipeline

How did Hollywood get the ear of a president who has spent years bashing it? One name: Jon Voight. TheWrap reported that the trigger moment came last month, when Voight — whom Trump has styled as a Hollywood ambassador — alongside production partners Steven Paul and Scott Karol, convinced Trump to publicly support a federal incentive. Congressional insiders told TheWrap they're extremely confident the bill passes Congress and gets Trump's signature by the end of the year, with the language taking immediate effect and available to qualifying productions at the start of 2027.

The union ground game is real. On October 6, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) joined Rep. Laura Friedman, the Los Angeles congressional delegation, and the major entertainment unions at the Alex Theatre in Glendale for a new push. Lieu's office pointed out the absurdity of the status quo: roughly 65 countries offer national filming incentives; the U.S. has never had one. The result has been hundreds of thousands of lost jobs — not just for stars, but for drivers, grips, electricians, carpenters, and caterers.

The weirdest coalition in Washington

The House leads are Reps. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas), Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.), Brian Jack (R-Ga.), and Laura Friedman (D-Calif.), with Reps. Mike Carey (R-Ohio), Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), and David Kustoff (R-Tenn.) also helping to spearhead, per Fox News Digital and Congressional releases. The Senate companion is from Schiff and Scott.

Moran's case is the most interesting. His East Texas district is about as far from the Sunset Strip as American politics gets, and he told Fox News Digital: "I do not want American storytelling to go overseas, to be diluted by values from overseas." His state, he said, is home to "conservative," "faith-based," and "patriotic" entertainment production — a direct rebuttal to conservatives who bristle at subsidizing an industry they see as liberally biased. "Do you want to see the stories and the movies and the TV productions that we watch go overseas, and be influenced by the culture and the values of other countries, somewhere else that do not love freedom like we do in America?" he asked.

Suozzi told Fox News Digital his home state was "watching good-paying jobs and production move overseas," adding, "We can't let that happen." Friedman, a former film and TV producer who has championed the credit since taking office in 2024, told TheWrap the bill "tells every country that has been outbidding us for American work that we are done losing." And Moran put it in jobs language that will play in every district: "This isn't about subsidizing Hollywood — it's about supporting the American worker, one story and one production at a time."

The industry has signed on too. The Motion Picture Association and unions including IATSE and the Directors Guild of America endorsed the bill immediately, TheWrap reported. The MPA said in its statement: "Passing this legislation could inject $250 billion into the country's economy and deliver nearly 145,000 new jobs every year across all 50 states."

Will it make it?

The clock is the problem. The congressional term is fast approaching its end, and getting anything passed after the November election is an uphill battle, as Fox News Digital noted. Moran said he feels confident "there will be some kind of bipartisan tax package during the lame-duck session," and his hope is that "this, or a version of this bill, makes it into the final text." That's the vehicle everyone is watching: not a standalone vote, but a ride on the year-end tax package.

The stakes aren't theoretical. 'American Idol' is ditching Hollywood for Georgia after two decades — another production California couldn't hold. From Guadagnino's AI-era films to CD Projekt's live-action Cyberpunk push to next week's Street Fighter movie, the content economy isn't slowing down — it's just increasingly made somewhere else. If the bill lands in the lame-duck package, 2027 could be the year the cameras come home.

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