California Assembly Passes Film Tax Bill to Expand Production Incentives
The vote on Assembly Bill 1138 was 73 in favor and one against, and comes a day after a similar bill, SB 630, passed 34-1 out of the state senate. The bills now head to the opposite houses as its co-authors say they are looking to expedite the committee vote process so that they can be passed by the legislature, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, and implemented by the California Film Commission all ideally before the legislative session ends for the year in September.
'We are in an emergency, given the unemployment levels and the loss of business in California due to the film industry, so we are working with the legislative leadership to find ways to have the bill go into effect this summer,' said Hollywood Asm. Rick Chavez Zbur, who is one of the co-authors on the bills.
The two bills had language removed that calls for the program's cap to be increased from $330 million to $750 million, though that increase is still included in Gov. Gavin Newsom's revised proposed budget for the coming fiscal year. Zbur says that there is high confidence among supporters of the program expansion that the cap raise will be approved in the final budget.
'The structural support that we are receiving from all of the entertainment unions, all of the studios, independent producers, the sound stage managers and owners is uniform, and I've never seen anything like it,' he said.
The two bills, known together as the California Film & TV Jobs Act, would expand the types of productions eligible for the tax credit, including animated productions and TV shows with a half-hour runtime.
The bill also allows productions that shoot in Los Angeles County and other select nearby shooting locations in Southern California to be eligible for an increased tax writeoff of 35% of all eligible spending.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of film and TV production jobs in California in 2024 fell by approximately 40,000 from the all-time high recorded in 2022, when ongoing demand for streaming shows and a need to catch up on projects delayed by the 2020 pandemic helped fuel a surge in productions.
But a variety of factors led to production jobs dropping not just in California but in other major American production hubs like Georgia and New York in 2024. Among them was an industry-wide cutback in production spending as media companies looked to make their streaming services profitable, as well as increased competition from other countries with their own production tax incentives.
The combination of that drop in jobs and the loss of work caused by the 2023 strikes that shut down productions for 191 days has led to thousands of entertainment workers in California facing serious financial struggle and has called the future of a cornerstone of the state's economy into question.
The post California Assembly Passes Film Tax Bill to Expand Production Incentives appeared first on TheWrap.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
5 minutes ago
- The Hill
Luna says lawmakers have evidence of ‘interdimensional beings'
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said during a Wednesday podcast episode with Joe Rogan that lawmakers have seen evidence of 'interdimensional beings.' 'I think that they can actually operate through the time spaces that we currently have,' Luna said during the podcast. 'And that's not something that I came up with on my own. That's based on stuff that we've seen. That's based on information that we've been told,' she added. In February, Luna and Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) sent letters to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe requesting a briefing on all unidentified anomalous phenomena or UAP-related records in their possession, with the ultimate goal of 'deliver[ing] transparency to the American people.' She says through investigations, she's discovered otherworldly information. 'Based on testimony that would be based on witnesses that have come forward. But what I can tell you is just we're told that they were that, they've seen things,' Luna told Rogan. 'And what I can tell you without getting into classified conversations is that there have been incidences that I believe were very credible people have reported that there have been movement outside of time and space,' she continued. Luna said she's never seen a portal or a spaceship but was searching for documentation that could lead to more evidence of life beyond humans.
6 minutes ago
As Trump-Putin summit nears, family of American held in Russia hopes for another prisoner exchange
As President Donald Trump prepares to travel to Alaska on Friday to address the future of Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the family of the Texas man serving the longest prison sentence of any American currently being detained in Russia is hopeful that another prisoner exchange between the two nations will be on the agenda. "We hope for better relations between the U.S. and Russia that will hopefully lead to the release of my brother," Margaret Aaron, one of David Barnes' two sisters, told ABC News anchor Gio Benitez in an interview Wednesday. Barnes, who grew up in Alabama, has been detained in Moscow since January 2022 and is currently serving a 21.5-year sentence. "He's hanging in there," Aaron said. "He has been extremely strong through the last three and a half years. We're extremely proud of him and he has continued to be hopeful that something will happen." Unlike other Americans who have been held in Russia, Barnes is accused by Russian prosecutors of crimes in the United States, not Russia. Yet American law enforcement had no involvement in Barnes' prosecution in Moscow. Barnes was convicted by a Russian judge of abusing his two sons years earlier in Texas, but prosecutors in Montgomery County, Texas, told ABC News that law enforcement in the Lone Star State investigated the claims after they were reported by Barnes' Russian ex-wife and did not find evidence to support them. "I do know that everyone that heard and investigated the child sexual abuse allegations raised by Mrs. Barnes during the child custody proceedings did not find them to be credible," Montgomery County District Attorney's Office Trial Bureau Chief Kelly Blackburn previously told ABC News. "He's been suffering," Aaron said Wednesday. "He's innocent." Barnes' ex-wife, Svetlana Koptyaeva, has maintained that Barnes abused their sons while the children were growing up in the Texas suburbs years ago. Koptyaeva was charged with felony interference with child custody after allegedly taking the children from Texas to Russia in 2019 while a child custody dispute between her and Barnes was playing out. In 2020, a Texas family court designated Barnes as the primary guardian of his sons, but since since Koptyaeva had taken them out of the country, Barnes' family says he decided to travel to Russia after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted to try to fight for similar custody or visitation rights in Moscow's court system. Barnes was arrested weeks after arriving in Russia and has been behind bars ever since. In April, a judge in Moscow denied Barnes' appeal of his conviction. "We really, really need to have him designated as wrongfully detained," Aaron said. "Hopefully, to start that process, we need the help of Trump and Secretary [Marco] Rubio." The upcoming meeting between Trump and Putin on American soil comes four months after Russian officials released ballerina Ksenia Karelina to the U.S. through a prisoner exchange. Following Karelina's return to the U.S., she wrote a letter to Trump calling for the release of Barnes along with fellow Americans Robert Gilman and Andre Khachatoorian. Trump posted the letter on social media. "David Barnes, a Texas father of two sons, has been detained in Russia for far too long under charges already proven to be false, and it is past time for him to be released," U.S. Senator John Cornyn of Texas said in a statement at the time. "I urge President Trump and Secretary Rubio to prioritize efforts to bring David and all wrongfully-detained Americans throughout the world home." Other Americans who were previously held in Russia, like Paul Whelan, Trevor Reed and Brittney Griner, were transferred to penal colonies far from Moscow following their convictions -- but Barnes has been held in Russia's capital since he was taken into custody. "We have visited Mr. Barnes eight times since his arrest in January 2022," a U.S. State Department spokesperson told ABC News. "Our last visit to Mr. Barnes in detention was in May 2025." With all eyes on Anchorage ahead of this week's presidential summit, Barnes' family and friends in the U.S. will be paying close attention. "David's strength keeps us going," Aaron said.
USA Today
35 minutes ago
- USA Today
Trump-Putin summit: What to know about Putin's past meetings with US leaders
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are slated to meet for a highly anticipated one-on-one in Alaska on Friday, Aug. 15 in a rare bilateral meeting on American soil at a time of heightened tensions. Putin will be the first elected Russian leader to visit Alaska for the summit, land that the United States purchased from Moscow for $7.2 million in 1867, according to the National Archives. If everything goes according to plan, this trip will mark Putin's eighth visit to the U.S. during his presidency, a role he has held for 20 years across two separate terms. Trump is hosting the meeting to try to push Moscow into a peace deal with Ukraine. The war, sparked by Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, nears the 3 1/2-year mark and stands as the largest conflict in Europe since World War II. More: Trump-Putin summit spotlights Alaska's strategic importance, vulnerability The leaders of the U.S. and Russia have met many times over the decades since the USSR dissolved, charting ups and downs in a complex relationship between the two nations, which has swung from periods of deep tension and distrust, to times of détente and cooperation. Putin's meetings with U.S. presidents: Dozens of talks with Bush, Clinton Since taking office in 1999, and again in 2012 after a brief four-year interlude when ally Dmitry Medvedev held the job, Putin has met with every U.S. president, according to U.S. State Department archives. In total, Putin has held dozens of official and unofficial meetings with American presidents over the years. Some presidents had more frequent interactions with the Russian leader than others. Although former President Bill Clinton's second term in office only briefly overlapped with Putin's initial tenure, the pair met several times in 2000 and had previously met when Putin was vice president under former Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Clinton delivered an address in the Russian State Duma in June 2000, recounting the more than half dozen times he visited the country, twice before he became president and five times while in office. Clinton developed a particularly close relationship with Yeltsin, the country's first democratically elected leader after the fall of the Soviet Union. President George W. Bush met with Putin at least a dozen times over his two terms, including a 2007 trip to the family home in Maine. As tensions ratcheted up, Putin's meetings with U.S. presidents dropped Since Russia illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, the relationship between Putin and the West has been increasingly strained, and the longtime Russian leader has met less frequently with U.S. presidents in the years since. An American president has not traveled to Russia for an official state visit for more than a decade. Former President Barack Obama's September 2013 trip to St. Petersburg is the last such visit, which initially included a stop in Moscow to meet with Putin. Obama cancelled the one-on-one roughly a month prior, citing a lack of progress on talks surrounding arms control, trade, security and human rights, as well as Russia's decision at the time to grant temporary asylum to American whistleblower Edward Snowden. Putin attended the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015, where he held talks with Obama, who sharply criticized Putin over the conflict in eastern Ukraine and Syria. Former President Joe Biden met with the Russian president just once in his term, in Geneva in June 2021. During Trump's first term, he held one bilateral meeting with Putin in Finland in July 2018. In a press conference after the closed-door talk, Trump appeared to publicly reject U.S. intelligence community findings of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and to accept Putin's denial of the interference. The pair have met briefly and informally several times since, such as on the sidelines of global leader summits, and have held several disclosed phone conversations. The Aug. 15 meeting will be the first in-person session between the two world leaders since Trump returned to the White House in January. Contributing: Reuters. Kathryn Palmer is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her at kapalmer@ and on X @KathrynPlmr.
