We Need Your Help to Pass the American Federal Film and TV Production Incentive

Dear member of the Louisiana film and television industry,

President Trump has called for a bipartisan National Film Incentive to spur domestic production across all 50 states, and we are asking you to publicly support an endeavor that will keep these jobs in the United States and grow them here in Louisiana.

As the statewide trade association advocating for the growth and success of Louisiana's film and entertainment industry, Film Louisiana sees every day what production means to the people of our state. A single feature or television series puts hundreds of our neighbors to work, from crew members and local vendors to hotels, restaurants, and a wide variety of small businesses. And that impact lasts well beyond the last day of filming leaving behind skills, wages, and investments that stay in our communities long after the cameras leave.

A broad coalition of industry organizations, including labor unions, actors, directors, producers, vendors, film commissioners, and film studios, is organizing a campaign to deliver supportive letters from the film community in every state to their senators and representatives in Congress.

In recent years, foreign countries have drawn film and television production overseas by offering competitive, industry-focused national tax policies. These governments know that film and television production brings massive economic and employment benefits. State-level incentives have been important in attracting production here at home, but alone, they cannot compete with the national-level incentives now established in dozens of countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

A federal film and television production incentive can help level the playing field, create good-paying American jobs, strengthen domestic production, and keep this signature American industry working at home. But we need your help to make it happen. Your public support is the catalyst. Messages from people who work in and alongside this industry will demonstrate the broad, bipartisan demand for action and build on the momentum already developing in Congress. 

Below you will find a letter urging passage of the federal film and television production incentive, addressed to Louisiana's senators and members of Congress.

We are seeking signatures from across the broad industry population throughout Louisiana, including crew, producers, actors, directors, vendors, local businesses who benefit from film, and anyone interested in supporting the screen economy. We urge you to sign, and to circulate it to your neighbors, friends, and coworkers, and also to those who have worked in Louisiana..

If you wish to sign, please complete this form.

Together, we can revitalize the domestic film industry, bring enormous investment back to the United States, and create more good jobs here in Louisiana.

Best,

Film Louisiana

We Are the Louisiana Film Industry

Organized in Partnership with FilmUSA 

Advocating for America's film and television production industry, FILMUSA.org

Dear Louisiana Senators and Members of Congress:

We are a Louisiana coalition of crew, actors, directors, producers, vendors, film commissioners, and other industry stakeholders. We write in support of a federal tax incentive for film and television production, and to say plainly that Louisiana is ready to deliver on it.

On August 31, the President called on Congress to act:

“I am going to suggest that Republicans and Democrats get together, and immediately craft Legislation to save the Movie, Television, and Entertainment Business in America. Congress should approve, immediately, a Federal Production Incentive to create Entertainment Jobs in America. It can be done quickly, accurately, efficiently and, importantly, will benefit ALL of America. What we watch on the Silver Screen should be made in what was once the Movie and Motion Picture Capital of the World. Let’s get this done!”

Within a day the response was bipartisan and legislation the President has called the Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act is now taking shape in the House.

The industry America invented is leaving quickly. More than forty nations now offer national production incentives, and together they host the majority of global production, a position the United States held for nearly a century. The American share has fallen below 40 percent and is projected to drop below 30 percent by 2035. We are the only major production nation competing without a national policy. Employment is down roughly 30 percent since 2022 for the costumers, carpenters, drivers, and technicians who are the middle class of this business. State programs work, but they were never built to compete against sovereign nations.

The opportunity is correspondingly large. More than half a trillion dollars in global production spending is expected over the next decade, and without a national policy our domestic industry will miss out on the vast majority of it. Returning the U.S. share to 65 percent would add $255 billion to the economy and 147,000 jobs a year. 

Louisiana is poised to benefit. We wrote the playbook: the first film tax credit in America passed here in 1992. We have the crew depth, stages, vendors, and locations a federal incentive would put to work immediately.

This is a small-business industry: 162,000 businesses nationally, 93 percent of them employing ten or fewer people. In Louisiana it supports almost 20,000 direct and indirect jobs and $965 million in wages, and paid $69.1 million to 1,279 local vendors in 2024. The benefit lands on Main Street, at the lumberyard, the vendors,  the diner, the hardware store, and the hotel. Season 7 of NCIS: New Orleans alone generated $140 million in new spending and 1,500 jobs.

What is at stake is our neighbors’ livelihoods. Louisiana helped build this industry, and we intend to capture its next chapter.

We ask three things of you. Cosponsor the federal production incentive when it is introduced, and say publicly that you support it. Contact Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) and Ranking Member Richard Neal (D-MA) to urge that it move without delay. And meet with our coalition to discuss how Louisiana leads the national effort to bring production home.

Sincerely,

The undersigned members of the Louisiana film and television community:

Your email is collected by Film USA for verification and campaign communications and will not be included as part of the public signature.

Please provide one sentence describing your experience filming or working in the film and television industry in Louisiana. For example: 'I have worked as a production sound mixer on feature films, television series, and commercials throughout Louisiana for more than 15 years.'