Most aspiring actors have a vision of their ideal future, and for decades those dreams often landed you in one of two locations: Los Angeles or New York City. But over the past few years, a new, unlikely contender has emerged as a performer’s paradise: New Jersey, home of Bruce Springsteen, pork roll (not Taylor Ham), and one of the most generous tax incentives for film and television production in the country.
“I was teaching up at Marist University, and the students would say, ‘Should we move to L.A.?’ And I was like, ‘You don’t need to anymore,’ ” says Jon Crowley, executive director of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission. “There’s so much production coming here. You can stay here and feel confident that you’re going to be working.”
The numbers support Crowley’s claim. In the fourth quarter of 2025, California’s hold as the No. 1 filming destination loosened, the state’s total TV and film count slipping by 20% and production spend by 22% year over year, according to a report from ProdPro; New York kept its solid second-place spot, with total
filming and production spend up 31% and 23%, respectively. Meanwhile, the Garden State saw the largest year-over-year growth in film and TV production of any state—up 75%—with its total production spend soaring past $300 million (up 12%).
New Jersey has a longer filmmaking history than most realize; after all, Thomas Edison established the first film studio ever in West Orange back in 1893. But the speed of the current rise is what has the industry taking notice. According to Crowley, more than 60 productions were filmed in New Jersey through the tax incentive program in 2025, a significant increase from 43 in 2024 and 39 in 2023. If the numbers hold, Crowley says, the state is looking at more than 30 productions in the first quarter of 2026 alone.
Recent Garden State productions have included buzzy projects like Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day,” the Timothée Chalamet–led Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” A24’s “Friday the 13th” prequel series “Crystal Lake,” and “Happy Gilmore 2,” starring Adam Sandler, just to name a few—all of which filled out their casts with local hires.
“Happy Gilmore 2” Credit: Scott Yamano/Netflix
And soon, it will be easier for actors to find these local productions—and for the local productions to find them. Crowley tells us the NJMPTC plans to launch a tool called NJActors Hub, live on the commission’s website, a platform for performers to post résumés and headshots for consideration in New Jersey projects.
The support infrastructure, Crowley says, is expanding to ensure those projects keep rolling into the state. That includes lumber mills in Edison and Newark that aid set production, and motion picture camera rental outfit PRG Gear setting up shop in Secaucus. “What’s happening is, because there’s more and more production here, you’re seeing more of a crew base relocating to New Jersey because they want to be part of the action,” Crowley says.
The growth is powered by the Film and Digital Media Tax Credit Program, reinstated by former Gov. Phil Murphy in 2018, which offers 35% tax credits for “wages and salaries for work performed” and for “goods and services used or consumed” in New Jersey (the latter drops to 30% for productions within a 30-mile radius of midtown Manhattan). Essentially, all productions—no matter the A-lister at the top of the call sheet—are incentivized to hire local, and that includes the cast. That fact isn’t going anywhere, either; the benefits program is on the books until 2049.
Notably, the state also offers a 4% bonus to productions that hire at least 25% of talent from “residents of an economically disadvantaged area in the state,” a category that applies to above and below the line, including background actors. “People who might not have a pathway because of family who are already in the industry to get them a foot in the door, we’re incentivizing the studios and networks to find these folks and put them to work,” says Crowley.
And those same studios and networks are setting up shop in the area. In May 2025, Netflix broke ground on a $1 billion production facility in Fort Monmouth, set to open in 2028. A few months later, Lionsgate officially began construction on its own studio campus in Newark. Meanwhile, Paramount has signed a 10-year lease on 1888 Studios in Bayonne.
“We estimate that these studios will create thousands of jobs for New Jersey residents,” said Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos in a release last May.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy at the Netflix Studios Fort Monmouth groundbreaking ceremony. Courtesy Netflix
Local acting educators are taking notice. “We’re obviously aware of [productions coming to New Jersey], because it’s all over the news,” says Ted Wrigley, managing director of the New Jersey School of Dramatic Arts in Montclair. “Over the years, we’ve had a lot of students come in, but only recently started wondering whether we’ve seen an uprising of people because they’re thinking, Oh, I don’t have to go to Hollywood to make a career. I can make it here, so I’d like to study here.”
For Wrigley, New Jersey has always been a thriving community for actors. “We have a community theater pretty much every few square miles. There’s so much opportunity to do your craft, to just be out there…. That’s where most people become the best actors, because they do it for the love of it,” he says. The state is also teeming with educational opportunities, from formal college programs at Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts, Kean University, and Montclair State to classes (for both stage and screen) at Equity theaters like Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, McCarter Theatre in Princeton, and George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick.
Both Crowley and Wrigley are quick to note that the increase of film and television opportunities is happening before Netflix, Lionsgate, and Paramount open their doors. The studio expansions will mean more productions per year and thousands of jobs, all of which need local actors. The upward trend is already there. When the floodgates finally open? Fuhgeddaboudit.
This story originally appeared in the Apr. 6 issue of Backstage Magazine.