When Peter Farrelly was deciding where to shoot “I Play Rocky,” the story of the making of the 1976 Sylvester Stallone classic, he knew that he couldn’t afford to film it in Philadelphia, where the original movie unfolded. Pennsylvania doesn’t offer much in the way of production incentives, and Farrelly was counting on generous tax credits. So he reconciled himself to filming the underdog drama in Atlanta or Sydney, which could fill in for the City of Brotherly Love. “I’ve shot a lot of movies in Georgia and Australia, and I loved the crews there,” Farrelly says. “But those places just don’t have the same feel as the Northeast.”
But when Farrelly and his production team did more research, they realized that they could get nearly as much bang for their buck in New Jersey — plus, the state offered locations that more closely approximated “Rocky”’s urban backdrop. So they built a boxing arena in a Jersey City studio for the film’s emotional climax, found a warehouse in Kenilworth that doubled for Rocky’s gym and apartment and even shot scenes of Stallone (played by Anthony Ippolito) running on what was supposed to be a Los Angeles beach in Asbury Park, the seaside community immortalized by Jersey’s most famous resident, Bruce Springsteen.
“People don’t realize how many different locations there are in New Jersey,” Farrelly says. “They’ve got cities; they’ve got rural areas; they even have a desert. You could make a Western there.”
Farrelly is just the latest filmmaker to become enamored with New Jersey. Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day,” James Mangold’s “No Direction Home” and “Happy Gilmore 2” with Adam Sandler are a few recent films that shot in the state. And the productions spent heavily. The sequel to “Happy Gilmore” shelled out $152 million over 64 days of filming; Spielberg’s and Mangold’s films spent $34 million and $81 million, respectively, and hired thousands of crew members. (“I Play Rocky” spent $27 million shooting in the state and collected $10 million in incentives, allowing the film to come in under budget.)
It’s all part of an unlikely production renaissance taking place in the Garden State. At a time when filming in the U.S. is down 20% as studios and streamers tighten their belts, New Jersey is the only state to see substantial gains. In 2025, 73 projects used the Garden State’s incentive program, up from 46 in 2024, while spending from those movies and shows is estimated to top $1 billion, up from $833 million in 2024. As Hollywood discovers New Jersey, it’s changing the popular perception of the state.
“Jersey was known as the home of Tony Soprano and Snooki,” says Tom Bernard, the head of Sony Pictures Classics and a New Jersey resident. “It wasn’t the greatest image. Now you’ve got Spielberg shooting here and Timothée Chalamet playing Bob Dylan. And it’s all thanks to the rebate.”
Denzel Washington on the set of “Here Comes the Flood” in Newark, New Jersey, in 2025
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Members of New Jersey’s creative community pinpoint the state’s transformation into a production hub to former Gov. Phil Murphy’s decision to reinstate a film and digital tax credit in 2018. His predecessor, Gov. Chris Christie, had suspended it in 2010 as a cost-saving measure. Murphy later worked with the legislature to extend the benefits, securing $439 million annually for the program through 2049. That decades-long commitment was nearly unprecedented and signaled New Jersey’s ambitions to challenge New York, California and Georgia for Hollywood’s business. Murphy’s successor and fellow Democrat, Mikie Sherrill, elected in 2025, plans to continue the state’s investment in the sector. “New Jersey has worked its way up to being one of the top states in the nation for the film industry, and we won’t stop now,” Sherrill says.
Filmmakers and crews who’ve worked in New Jersey have been impressed by the state’s eagerness to make sure they have everything they need. They rave about the film office’s efficiency in processing their credits and are wowed by how helpful it is in doing everything from finding 15 miles of train tracks for a chase sequence in “Disclosure Day” to clearing up permitting hurdles so the “Joker” team could transform downtown Newark into a burned-out version of ’80s New York.
“You can have all of the incentives in the world, but if you don’t have the support of the state, it’s meaningless,” says Katherine Delaney, a location manager who has worked on such New Jersey-based productions as “West Side Story” and “A Quiet Place Part III.” “When I’m working on a movie in New Jersey, I can reach out to the film commission and say, ‘I’m thinking of this neighborhood,’ and they are great about saying, ‘There was just a huge project there — maybe you want to stay away from this town or county, because it’s been overshot.’”
Beyond its diverse range of locations, New Jersey has other competitive advantages. Its proximity to New York makes it an attractive place for actors and directors to set up shop with their families during filming. Plus, many crew members on New York productions live in the Garden State.
“There are 35 other states with good tax incentives, so why are they flat or down? And why is New Jersey up?” says Jon Crowley, executive director of the New Jersey Motion Picture & Television Commission. “We have a major-league-level talent workforce: Seventy percent of the Teamsters live in New Jersey, and they don’t want to get on a bridge or a tunnel to get to work. They’d rather hop on the Parkway and be on set in 30 minutes.”
But why does it take tax breaks to bring Hollywood to New Jersey? In the 1940s and ’50s, at the height of the studio system, if you watched a film or TV show, chances were it was shot on a back lot in Los Angeles. In the 1960s and ’70s, that started to change as filmmakers made more movies and shows on location. But in recent decades, there’s been another shift: In the 1990s, Canada began luring U.S. productions to cities like Toronto (which frequently stood in for New York) by offering incentives that made shooting there cheaper. Other states and countries got in on the game by rolling out more and more generous credits and subsidies as a way to bolster their economies with production jobs.
“When I started in this business 50 years ago, the decision about where you shot a film or TV show was made solely by the director and the producer, and it was a creative decision,” Michael E. Uslan, the producer of “The Dark Knight” and a New Jersey resident, says. “That has completely changed. If you don’t make a movie in a state with a tax incentive, you don’t make a movie, period.”
Not every film incentive has paid off. States like Iowa and Arizona offered big tax breaks to attract moviemakers’ business, only to end the programs when studies revealed that productions returned a fraction of their costs and failed to create enough jobs. But other states have succeeded, notably Georgia, which has become a major production hub whose incentives generate an estimated $8.5 billion in economic activity. Supporters of New Jersey’s program believe it has created something equally impactful. Because the incentives are in place for more than 20 years, instead of having to be renewed every few years, entertainment companies have the confidence to establish roots in New Jersey.
“We operate a lot of incentive programs across a wide gamut of different parts of the economy. This one is probably the most surgical, the most thought out, having gone through the most iterations and received the most industry feedback,” says Evan Weiss, chief executive officer of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.
As evidence that the program is paying off, Weiss points to the fact that entertainment companies aren’t just choosing New Jersey to shoot a single series or movie. They’re building full-fledged studios, so they can access additional tax breaks that the state hands out to productions that shoot in newly constructed facilities. Netflix, for instance, is spending $1 billion to construct 13 soundstages in Fort Monmouth, while Paramount is investing $1.2 billion to create a studio with 23 soundstages in Bayonne. Lionsgate has committed to being the anchor tenant for a studio in Newark.
Of course, many of these operators are multibillion-dollar corporations. Do they really need a handout? Even some promoters of the breaks seem uncomfortable with the optics, though they fear the state has no other choice if it wants to get production jobs for its citizens.
“I have mixed feelings about incentives [in general],” says Carol Cuddy, a unit production manager and member of the New Jersey Film & Television Commission. “Why should we have to finance a factory or stadium? But if every other industry is getting financial help, why shouldn’t we? We’re just as deserving.”
Supporters argue that film incentives contribute to the economy at large, not just subsidize the salaries of local grips, gaffers and camera and lighting operators. “When these productions come, they need hotel rooms, they need groceries for craft services, they need fuel and paint and all the nuts and bolts to build and design sets,” says Crowley. “That supports local businesses and gets infused into the New Jersey economy.”
New Jersey’s role as a center of production may be new, but the state played an important part in entertainment history. It was where Thomas Edison invented the motion picture camera and opened America’s first studio. But Edison used aggressive tactics as he built his business, forming an alliance of patent holders so that aspiring filmmakers had to pay him and his associates to get their movies made. The result was a flight west, one that resulted in the creation of Hollywood.
“When filmmakers decided not to pay Edison, they ran. And they ran until they hit the Pacific Ocean,” Crowley says. “Taxes drove them away from New Jersy, and tax incentives are bringing them back again.”
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