New Mexico’s film office director Steve Graham has solutions in place to combat declining production in the United States.
The producer-turned-film commissioner sat down with TheWrap’s Editor-in-Chief Sharon Waxman at TheWrap’s Cannes Conversations in partnership with Brand Innovators to discuss the decline in film production in America with many bigger budget projects shooting in competitor markets like the United Kingdom and Australia.
Graham cited contraction in the industry after double strikes, slow COVID-19 recovery and mergers and acquisitions across the entertainment industry as primary indicators for the slump in production. He noted that his state is currently shooting 10 projects – film and series alike – down from 20 last spring.
But the director of New Mexico’s film office has not given up hope on domestic production. His state’s vibrant tax incentives, job advancement programs and film studio partnerships are buoying its production.
“We have a 25% to 40% cash or rebatable tax incentive,” Graham said, and he told Waxman at Cannes that New Mexico has built a vibrant film community because the incentive has been in place for 20 years with projects like “Breaking Bad” and “Stranger Things” shooting in the state. “We’ve built a very strong crew base. We have great facilities. We have studios, stages across the state. We’re at least a dozen crews deep with world class people ready to work.”
In addition to simply having the facilities and crews at the ready, New Mexico implemented a job advancement program. This program, meant to elevate lower level staffers, promotes the development of new talent.
“If you as a production agree to hire someone in a position that’s higher than what they’ve done in the past,” Graham said, “We know you’re taking a chance on someone, who you are lifting up, so we’ll subsidize half of their salary up to 1,040 hours, which is usually enough for a feature and gets you a good way through a series.”
New Mexico has also introduced a film partner program to stabilize the film industry and incentivize more production companies to stay and shoot in the state.
“Netflix was our first partner, and over the course of 10 years it’s $200 million a year. So $2 billion in the state,” Graham said NBCUniversal followed with a similar deal. “All of those deals have a capital component, so we’re asking them to invest in the infrastructure.”
Netflix alone has built an additional 12 stages in the state and built out a backlot for the “Stranger Things” creators’ next series.
When asked about potential tariffs on films made outside of the U.S., Graham said he doesn’t “have a crystal ball” but believes that any push for domestic production that boosts competition domestically would benefit New Mexico production.
“I think it’s not hyperbolic to say it’s an existential crisis,” Graham said. “I don’t really know policy well enough to understand how a national incentive would work. But if it were something that — anything that increases domestic production for us is good because, as I said, we’re very competitive among the states. So if it means that there’s more work being done in the US, it’s good for us.”
Watch the full video of the panel below.
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