SACRAMENTO — Extending his attack on Republican states for their positions on guns, civil rights and abortion, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday called on Hollywood to “walk the path” of liberal values by bringing its film and television productions back from states like Georgia and Oklahoma.
Mr. Newsom issued the challenge with an ad in Variety that urged the state’s left-leaning creative community to “take stock of your values — and those of your employees — when doing business in these states.”
The Democratic governor on Wednesday simultaneously approved a legislative proposal that would provide a $1.65 billion, five-year extension to California’s film and television production tax credit program.
It marked the second time in recent weeks that Mr. Newsom has used the California law as a cudgel to tear apart Republican leaders elsewhere. Last month, he signed a bill allowing residents to sue illegal gun manufacturers and took the opportunity to chide Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas for previously allowing his residents to sue abortion providers.
Mr. Newsom’s remarks on Wednesday underscored the pressure the intensifying culture wars are putting on corporate America, particularly in states where the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade severely curtailed women’s reproductive rights.
Some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including the Walt Disney Company, Netflix and Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, have announced programs to help employees who need access to abortion but can’t get it in their home states. Hundreds of entertainment figures also denounced policies in Republican-led states that weakened protections for LGBTQ people. Last week, about 400 television creators and hosts publicly demanded that production companies protect pregnant employees in states where abortion is prohibited.
But the entertainment companies have yet to announce any major plans to cancel expansions or move offices. Tulsa King, Taylor Sheridan’s upcoming crime drama starring Sylvester Stallone, is shooting this summer for Paramount+ in Oklahoma.
In Georgia on Monday, Gov. Brian Kemp announced that film and television productions generated $4.4 billion in the state this fiscal year, a new record. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was filmed in the state, the governor noted, as was the fourth season of “Stranger Things.”
“I was pleased to name Gavin Newsom for Oklahoma’s 2021 Economic Entrepreneur of the Year award, and I’m glad to see him compete for two years in a row,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt joked in a statement Wednesday. Mr. Stitt took a similar jab at California’s governor last year over the state’s pandemic shutdown, which Mr. Stitt said had pushed businesses in his state.
The Motion Picture Association, the trade group representing major movie studios and Netflix, declined to comment Wednesday.
Moving production can be extremely expensive and logistically difficult, and some of the biggest companies in the entertainment industry are deeply invested in states with conservative leaders. Disney, for example, maintains extensive operations in Florida despite a bitter and costly standoff between employees and the state.
After Disney, under pressure from its employees, opposed Florida’s ban on LGBTQ-related education, state lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis stripped the company of the special powers it had over parts of the land where Disney World and other Disney properties are located. the company. Meanwhile, Disney has postponed a planned move of about 2,000 high-profile jobs from California to Florida.
Mr. Newsom has been at the center of this power struggle for months, trolling Mr. DeSantis on Twitter and urging Disney to rethink its investments in Florida. The Variety ad was the latest in a series of efforts by Mr. Newsom to bring his defense of “California values” to a national stage.
A $105,000 spot aired in Florida last month — attacking Mr. DeSantis and urging Florida businesses to come to California — was the opening salvo in a national effort by Mr. Newsom that includes ads in Texas newspapers attacking Mr. n Abbott on abortion restrictions and a highly publicized trip to Washington, D.C., to discuss, among other things, gun legislation.
Expanding his attacks to include Oklahoma and Georgia, Mr. Newsom targeted not only two of California’s most aggressive rivals for film, television and other content production, but also two of the nation’s most conservative states on social questions.
Oklahoma, which aggressively boosted film production incentives during the pandemic, banned nearly all abortions after Roe v. Wade was overturned. And Georgia, which has one of the most generous film production incentive packages in the country, has granted fetuses full legal recognition. This week, a tax agency in Georgia found that pregnant women can get a personal tax exemption of $3,000 for each fetus with a detectable heartbeat.
Mr. Newsom noted that California’s abortion rights are among the safest in the nation. The state has also passed some of the nation’s strictest gun safety and civil liberties laws for LGBTQ people.
California’s film tax credit — which the state created in 2009 after productions began leaving for Canada — has been of controversial value, even with an expansion and overhaul in 2014. The incentive allows filmmakers to recoup up to 25 percent of costs si—up to the first $100 million—on crew salaries and other expenses, excluding star salaries. But other countries, including Georgia, offer more substantial discounts.
Critics complain that the tax credit encourages bidding wars and rarely keeps production in the state long-term. A 2019 analysis by the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office found that a third of the projects that received the grants likely would have been done in California regardless.
“While the credit likely caused some film and television projects to be shot here, many other similar projects were also made here without receiving any financial incentives,” the report said.
But Newsom on Wednesday touted another study conducted this year for the Motion Picture Association by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. that concluded California’s program helped create more than 110,000 jobs and tens of billions of dollars in economic output. In recent years, the tax credit has also helped bring shows like American Horror Story, Veep and Lucifer from other states and countries back to California.
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