The production film can soon see Lifeline with a tax credit plan of $ 750 million about to pass

California legislators have reached the final stages to adopt an expansion of the film incitement program of $ 750 million in the state, the last legislative votes which should take place before the start of the next period of the program on July 7.

The votes mark the end of the months of hand pivoting by studios and unions to know if Sacramento would bring relief to help attach the wave of cinematographic and television productions fleeing the state in recent years.

On Thursday, an audience of the committee in the State Senate will be held for the California Film & TV Jobs Act (AB 1138), which codifies the extended eligibility rules for the production of tax incentives.

The changes in the bill include the reduction in the execution time required for television productions in order to allow half an hour emissions to qualify, as well as to allow other types of productions such as animation and large-scale competition emissions. The leaders of multiple Hollywood Labor organizations should testify in favor of the bill within the Senate Committee through the Coalition of the Entertainment Union.

Friday, the Sacramento legislature is expected to resume a trailer bill which will finalize an increase in the 330 million dollars program at $ 750 million, an increase that Governor Gavin Newsom announced his support for last October. The aid remained part of its proposed budget, even if California’s budgetary stability has become more precarious due to the increase in the costs of the recovery of forest fires in Los Angeles and other parts of the State as well as repeated threats from the Trump administration to draw federal funding.

The bill of the trailer which should go within the framework of an agreement between Newsom and the legislators, the authors of AB 1138 say that they expect the bill, which has already been transmitted by the State Assembly, reached a final vote in the State Senate this week.

MP Rick Zbur (D-Hollywood) said that he and other authors have spoken to legislative leaders about the importance of accelerating the adoption of the bill instead of waiting to plan it for the votes towards the end of the legislative session in September.

“Our objective is that this program and this legislation comes into force this summer because there is an entire industry in this state that is in a hurry,” Zbur told Thewrap.

Two years after writers and actors strongly strike studios and divided unions, the two parties presented a unified front in lobbying for changes to the Californian tax incentive program to make it more competitive. Last month, New York increased the ceiling by its own program to $ 800 million, while Louisiana reduced its ceiling to $ 125 million, but moved away from the plans to completely cancel the incentive program after intense lobbying of local workers in the film industry.

Last year, California Film Commission estimated that an increase in the program ceiling at $ 750 million could reduce 4,400 to 5,500 production jobs to the Golden State. It is a boost that would be urgent because thousands of workers had their finances exhausted by the 2023 strikes, the main cups in Greenlights production by the studios and the economic impact of Los Angeles forest fires in January.

But it would only be part of the 20,000 estimated jobs lost between 2022, when production employment reached its peak in California and 2024, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It is also likely that many of the productions that will be eligible for the tax credit will be small and independent productions, because the California tax credit program does not count the salaries of the actors and other talents above the line as qualified expenses. Other states and countries such as Georgia and the United Kingdom have the talents above the line, which partly explains for which films like “Jurassic World: Rebirth” and “Avengers: Doomsday” have filming abroad.

This rule, combined with waterproof ethics on the belt which permeates Hollywood, has reflected in the last cycle of tax credits delivered by California Film Commission last Monday. Of the 48 qualified productions, 43 were independent productions, the majority working with budgets less than $ 10 million.

One of the rare exceptions was the continuation to come from Sony’s comedy “A set”, with Keke Palmer and Sza, who had a budgeted budget of $ 14 million.