Tom Cruise has done some absolutely incredible stunts over the years. He’s climbed the tallest building in the world and he’s driven motorcycles off of cliffs. The way that Cruise presents himself, it’s as if it’s all in a day’s work. However, Simon Pegg says that the movie star does get nervous, at least sometimes, as he once did before the major set piece of Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation.
Simon Pegg has been on hand for most of the Mission: Impossible movies and thus has had a front row seat to Tom Cruise’s wild stunts. Pegg tells People Cruise was smiling the entire time he was hanging off the Burj Khalifa for Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. However, that wasn’t the case when Cruise had to hang off the outside of a cargo plane for Rogue Nation. Pegg said…
Hanging off a cargo jet as Cruise does in Rogue Nation is the sort of stunt where lots can do wrong. There’s, of course, there’s wind that’s pushing against him the entire time, but hanging off a plane also opens Cruise up to flying debris of all sorts. It’s the kind of thing that can’t really be controlled for in the moment, and could have led to serious injury had anything actually hit him. The stunt
Certainly, every precaution is taken to ensure safety on these stunts. Everybody is well aware of what the worst-case scenario is. But one can imagine that hanging off the side of an airplane in mid-air, there’s only so much that can be done. It feels like whatever harness is designed to keep somebody from falling off a building would feel safer than whatever harness was designed to keep somebody from falling off an airplane. The Cruise didn’t only make the actor nervous. Cruise admits it also terrified his mother.
Of course, one then has to wonder how one of the major stunts for Mission: Impossible -The Final Reckoning compares to the others, considering it was also a stunt that involved Cruise hanging from an airplane. Rather than being a massive cargo jet, Cruise is seen hanging off the wing of a small plane in the Final Reckoning trailers. Maybe the fact that the plane was smaller actually made it less scary.
Honestly, it’s nice to know that Tom Cruise even gets nervous pulling off some of these stunts. He’s always looking so confident so much of the time that it humanizes him to know that he is capable of fear.
Over the weekend, President Trump dropped a social media post decrying the state of the film industry in The United States. He said he’s instructed the Department Of Commerce to “begin the process” of placing tariffs on all movies shot outside the country. Immediately, social media exploded with fears about what this might mean for various movie studios and production houses, and several prominent media companies showed notable declines in their stock prices. With no timelines and few details, however, there’s a lot of uncertainty and several questions that still need to be answered before anyone knows what exactly this might mean.
Before we get into those questions though, let’s back up real quick and talk about the state of the film industry in The United States and more specifically, Los Angeles. In his social post, President Trump said movie-making has been “devastated” in Hollywood. The numbers back that up.
a recent report from FilmLA, the group that handles permits in Los Angeles, shooting is down more than twenty percent year over year. Television production is down almost fifty percent compared to an average of the last five years. Only 13 total pilots were shot in LA in the first quarter of this year, the lowest number in any quarter since FilmLA started keeping track. Sound stage usage is down. Permits being pulled are down. Anecdotally, there are a lot of people in the industry in Los Angeles talking about the struggle to find work. Something is clearly going on. The question is why.
In President Trump’s social post, he blames a “concerted effort” by other nations to offer incentives to filmmakers to shoot on location in their specific areas. You can read his message in its entirety below…
Now, it’s easy to verify that some of that is happening. Locations within The United States, Georgia most prominently, have started offering aggressive tax breaks and incentives for productions that film in the state. Officials literally produced brochures for movie studios and indie filmmakers that go over exactly how it works, and it has worked.
Georgia now has more movies and tv shows filmed on location than every State except California and New York. In fact, this has become such a problem the past few years that Governor Gavin Newsom has loudly and aggressively called for an expansion of California’s own tax incentive program to try and keep up. A bill is currently working its way through the state legislature.
To President Trump’s point, that same thing is happening with other countries too. Canada, the city of Vancouver in particular, has become a hotbed for filming and now attracts nearly 2 billion dollars a year in movie and tv production. That number was only expected to increase, as well, as local lawmakers recently passed even more generous incentive packages to try and entice more productions. Mexico has also become a hotbed for filming, as it offers cheaper costs and its own lucrative tax breaks. The UK and other countries in Europe have also started following suit and begun loudly courting the major studios with their own packages.
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In short, producing movies and tv shows, regardless of budget sizes, now often involves incentive shopping. Whether they stay in The United States or not, most production companies are looking for the best deal, and even the actors have become jaded and are very open about how the process works. If a studio can shoot somewhere cheaper, they’re probably going to do that, and with the current pricing structure and cost of living issues in Los Angeles, Hollywood has become a lot less desirable.
Something Else Is Going On Too Though.
In the 1990s and 2000s, the major Hollywood studios combined to release more than 110 theatrical movies per year on average. Over the last few years, that average has barely topped 80. The TV show numbers are just as scary. Back in 2018, there were more than 16,000 episodes of television produced. In 2024, that number barely topped 11,000 episodes.
When the streaming services first started coming into prominence, cable television was still operating at near max capacity. The major networks were all filling every available primetime slot, many cable networks were creating their own original programming and the premium channels like HBO were still in the midst of a creative renaissance.
Over the last few years, however, almost everyone other than Netflix has started pulling back. Many of the streaming services are still struggling to be profitable and have reduced production costs. Many cable networks have stopped producing their own programming, and the major TV networks have reduced their own spending, sometimes cancelling popular shows simply because they’re expensive to produce.
So, right now, the movie industry is in a position where a lot of companies are reducing the number of movies and TV shows they’re creating. Combine that with there being way more competition by other states and other countries to offer incentive programs and cheaper locations to film, and it’s been a perfect storm of problems for Hollywood.
So, Would Tariffs Help? And How Would They Even Work?
The problem in predicting what might happen if tariffs were to go into effect is we don’t have any idea what they might actually look like. President Trump said he’s planning to roll out 100% tariffs, but we don’t know how those would be calculated.
Would half of any ticket sold for a movie produced outside The United States be paid to the government? That would likely create a system in which certain movies were more expensive to see in the theaters, which would likely be a catastrophe for the box office performance of those movies.
And what about if a movie went straight to streaming? Would the production be charged a fee based on its actual budget? If a movie cost $50M to shoot, would producers have to literally pay the The United States government a $50M penalty, sort of like how the luxury tax works in some professional sports if you spend over the salary cap?
None of this accounts for television or future rights payments or a wide variety of other issues either. Producing art is a lot more complicated than producing a manufactured good. That doesn’t mean these obstacles are insurmountable. It just means it’s a lot more complicated to forecast how any of this might work.
What’s Going To Happen?
No one knows.
There has been a lot of talk about tariffs since President Trump took office. He’s vowed to make America’s trade agreements fairer, but there are wide disagreements amongst experts and political pundits about what fair actually means.
In the last hundred days, President Trump has advocated various positions. At one point, he seemed poised to drop moderate to massive tariffs on basically every country in the world, but after some negotiations, an overwhelming majority were paused so new agreements could be worked out. Those deals are still being negotiated, and no one is quite sure what they’ll look like or when they’ll go into effect. So, obviously, there’s going to be uncertainty around these proposed film tariffs for awhile.
Many experts in Hollywood are calling them the potential end of the film industry as we know it. They feel studios won’t be able to make the types of movies they’re making in Los Angeles for the budgets they’re making them at, which would mean cutting costs or reducing the number of films made. They also worry other countries will impose their own tariffs on movies shot in The United States, which would greatly reduce foreign grosses.
Others are cautious embracing the tariffs, as they feel the current tax incentive system isn’t good for anyone. They want to see a dramatic change in how business is done and feel only a massive jolt to the system will save Hollywood from losing more and more business to other countries. They also point to many animation and VFX jobs going to foreign countries and wonder if tariffs would help keep those in The United States.
Right now, all we can do is wait for more information and listen when the major studios start commenting publicly on how they feel this will affect business.
Denzel Washington is a music mogul on the move in the first teaser trailer for Spike Lee‘s Highest 2 Lowest.
The montage-heavy preview features quick scenes from the film interspersed with images of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Washington and co-star A$AP Rocky are shown on the move, with what looks like police in hot pursuit.
Over the visuals, Washington’s character in voiceover says, “There’s more to life than just making money. It’s integrity. There’s what you stand for. It’s what you actually believe in. Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe you’ll be successful? The hard times will come from the good times. The hard times will come from success. The hard times will come from the money. And the mayhem follows. So can you handle the mayhem? Can you handle the money? Can you handle the success? Can you handle the failure? Can you handle the lovers? Can you handle the memes? Can you handle everything that there is in between? That’s the question I have for you: Can you handle it? All money ain’t good money.”
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Lee dropped the preview on his Instagram account on Monday, writing in part, “I know u have been waiting ‘hella long’.”
The team-up marks Washington and Lee’s first film together in nearly 20 years and fifth collaboration overall.
Highest 2 Lowest, a New York City-set reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa’s crime thriller High and Low, stars Washington as a powerful music industry exec, known for having the “best ears in the business,” who’s targeted in a ransom plot that puts him in a life-or-death moral dilemma.
Highest 2 Lowest — the cast of which also includes Jeffrey Wright, Ice Spice and Ilfenesh Hadera — will have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday, May 19.
The film will get a theatrical release from A24 on Aug. 22 before arriving on Apple TV+ on Sept. 5.
A Simple Favor is back — however, it’s anything but simple.
Another Simple Favor, Paul Feig‘s follow-up to the 2018 film, sees the return of Blake Lively as Emily, Anna Kendrick as Stephanie and Henry Golding as Sean, and follows their lives when Emily is released from prison after murdering her twin sister. The next adventure shows them reuniting in Capri to attend Emily’s wedding, where she marries a new man, Dante, who is part of an Italian mob.
But to no surprise, not everything goes smoothly, as there are even more twists in this sequel. [Major spoilers from Another Simple Favor.] It’s revealed that Emily’s triplet, Charity, who is believed to have died during childbirth, is on a murder spree, killing Dante — as well as Emily’s ex-husband, Sean. She also has an obsession with Emily, as she thinks they are one. Jessica Sharzer, who was a co-writer along with Laeta Kalogridis, told The Hollywood Reporter that the decision was made to embrace the “gay following” that the first film had and “to tell really great stories that also have a queer element to them.”
The film, which hit streaming on May 1, marks Lively’s first release since the ongoing legal battle heated up in December with It Ends With Us star-director Justin Baldoni. Sharzer says the drama surrounding Lively hasn’t affected her relationship with the film, though she admits: “I feel for what she’s going through right now.” Instead, Sharzer hopes people will “focus on what’s in the movie and not all of the extra stuff.” Up next, Sharzer is working on She Started It, an adaptation of Sian Gilbert’s thriller novel, which she is set to direct for Lyrical Media, Ryder Picture Company.
Below, Sharzer tells THR about the “twisted” love story between Emily and Stephanie, how her contracting COVID-19 inspired one of the scenes, Lively’s influence on the project and reveals that there have already been talks for a third film.
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Was it always the plan to do a sequel for this film? Or did you have any idea that the story would expand when you were working on the first one?
It was actually the opposite. We never expected there to be a sequel. We certainly didn’t plan for one, and if we had, we would’ve ended the first movie differently because we left one of our characters in jail for murder. So, figuring out how to handle undoing was the first challenge. There was no second book in the series, and we thought it was a one-off movie. Then, the success of the movie and its continued success on streaming were what led to the idea of a sequel.
When you were writing this film, were you writing it for a theatrical release or streaming — and did that change how you approached the script?
We always knew it was a streaming movie. We sold it directly to Amazon, and Amazon wanted it for their platform. So that was never a question. And as far as how it impacted the way I wrote, it didn’t change my process at all. It’s a really visual movie. It’s a big-screen movie, whether you’re watching it on a TV or not. Paul really wanted that visual panache and that big world-building that you see in the movie.
There are so many great additions to the cast, such as Allison Janney. Did you have anyone in mind for the roles you could envision when writing it?
For sure. I have to admit, I watched 365 Days, and as soon as I saw Michele Morrone, I thought he has to be our male lead, and I’m so glad it worked out that he wanted to do it. So, I always write with actors in mind. We don’t always end up with those actors, and of course, it’s the director’s decision who’s in the movie anyway, but for me as a writer, it really helps me to imagine actors as I’m writing just to get the cadence and the voice and the personality. It really helps my writing.
Emily’s lines are so witty, and she’s so quick. I’m curious if Blake Lively’s real-life sense of humor inspires any of her dialogue?
Definitely, I mean, she’s funny. She’s married to a very funny man [Ryan Reynolds], and I think they help each other with all of their projects. And so it’s a really collaborative process because Paul Feig is also a writer, in addition to being a great director, and Blake has great ideas for her character, to whom she feels very connected. It really is a collaborative process, and there are a lot of funny lines that I either didn’t write or don’t remember writing, and it could have come from a number of sources.
Could you give me an example?
My favorite line in the first movie that makes me laugh every time that I did not write is when Blake is at a playground with Anna, and she’s talking about working for a tough boss and she says, “Or they will fuck you in the face.” That line always makes me laugh, and I know I didn’t write it because I’ve never heard that expression before, but I just love it. So there’s always lines that are news to me and in a good way.
Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively in Another Simple Flavor.
Lorenzo Sisti/Amazon Content Services
Oh wow. She came up with that?
I don’t know if it was her or Paul. I’m not exactly sure what the source was, but it definitely wasn’t me. (Laughs.)
There are so many twists and turns in the first movie, but there was even more in this one. Was there any pressure to make audiences more surprised by this movie?
I think there was. Whenever you do a sequel to anything, you’re trying to not only live up to the first movie but outdo it. And I think there was a real aspiration to make this one bigger in every way. It was a much more expensive movie, but going to Italy was a really exciting addition to the story. And as you mentioned, a lot of new characters were added. So, we definitely wanted more twists and turns in this second movie.
I truly wasn’t expecting Emily to have a triplet who is still alive, especially because we’re told she died in childbirth in the first film. What sparked that creative decision?
It was a combination of factors. One of the things Blake loved the most about the first movie was getting to play those twins who are identical but so different in every way. There was a real appetite for how do we do that again when that sister died, and because there had been this plant of triplets in the first movie, we were looking for a way to bring back that third sister we never met and find a way to explain how she is somehow still alive.
Charity’s obsession with Emily was also really shocking. What were the discussions like about wanting to include that?
The first movie has a really big gay following, which we wanted to embrace. We wanted to meet those fans and not disappoint them. And so we were looking for opportunities to tell really great stories that also have a queer element to them. There was a wonderful podcast that was completely devoted to the first movie and it was three queer women who were doing A Simple Podcast. They were a big reason why we ended up doing a sequel at all because they interviewed the key cast, Paul and me, and it just revived all of our interest in the project and gave Paul the idea to do a sequel. So the queer element of the franchise is baked in as far as we’re concerned to the storytelling and the relationship between Anna and Blake in the movie we see as a love story. It may not be a romantic story, but we see it as primarily a love story between two women. It may be twisted, but it is a love story.
Anna Kendrick stars as Stephanie Smothers in Another Simple Favor.
Lorenzo Sisti/Amazon Content Services
What was Blake’s reaction to reading that in the script? What was Paul’s?
I was on strike during a lot of these developments and these conversations, and so I wasn’t part of all of them, but I think Blake really was behind this decision. I don’t think it was handed to her without her participation. My sense is that she really embraced it and wanted to do it.
I’m sure any director like Paul or even a big star like Blake will give notes on the script. Was there anything else that they brought to the table with this follow-up?
Yeah, one of the things that was really fun and that I didn’t know anything about going into the writing was this cottagecore phenomenon, and Blake is really interested in it. So, she brought that idea, which you can see in the Charity character, that she’s dressed in this really old gingham dress and she has this hairstyle that’s really retro and that came from Blake directly. She really is interested in cottagecore and I just didn’t know what it was when she brought it up.
I wanted to ask about the fashion in this film, because Emily’s extravagant style adds a lot to her character. Did you envision any of the looks for her character when writing the script? And did Blake have a say in additional costumes?
Blake had a massive say in the fashion, and I think she had a great collaboration with our amazing costume designer. I always knew that the character was glamorous in the first movie, but I also tried to stay in my lane. I’m not a costume designer. I’m not a fashionista. I’m not part of that world. And so I will indicate the feel of what somebody looks like without getting too specific about the items of clothing, because I know the costume designer and the actor are going to come in and they’re going to come up with something better than what I could imagine. And they did. Off of the first movie, we knew that Blake’s fashion would be a major element in the second movie. And I think that was a really exciting opportunity for everyone involved, mostly the costume designer and Blake, to really think, “How can we outdo what we did in the first movie? What new looks can we bring to the character?” Especially being in Europe on this location wedding.
There were two looks I loved, and I thought they were so funny. One was the huge hat that Emily wore because it was just so over the top.
That wasn’t part of her costume, and she found it shopping in Capri and bought it, and they put it in the movie. So that hat was a discovery while they were on the set.
Also, the all-black morning outfit, when it’s first revealed that it’s Charity.
Yes, It’s over the top. Everything about the movie is over the top, but we embraced the insanity of every element of it and just went for it.
Back to the twists, in the scene where Anna is on the truth serum, how did that idea come about?
That came from the very first draft of the script. I do have a funny story about this. I wrote that scene when I had a 102 fever with COVID-19 and was isolated from my family. I was in a kind of hallucinatory state, and I had this idea that it would be really fun to see Anna under the influence like that, where she just can’t stop telling the truth, but her truth is so much more innocent than anyone else in the story. Her truth is about lying to become PTA president and that kind of thing. So, that idea came from being so sick and having such a high fever that I myself was in that hallucinatory state and put it in the script.
Wow, I’m so sorry to hear that.
No, it was actually a gift. I was better a few days later, but actually, it’s kind of fun as a writer when things happen to you and you’re able to use them, not a bad thing.
Henry Golding stars as Sean in Another Simple Favor.
Lorenzo Sisti/Amazon Content Services
What happened between Stephanie and Sean in between the films. We see Sean really struggling trying to cope with everything that happened in the first one. Why didn’t they get back together and explore their connection more?
We had a different ending to the first movie, which was they did get together. And when we tested it for audiences, they really did not like that ending. And I think the reason was because they wanted Anna to have a full arc where she is on her own and has moved on with her life on her own, that it wasn’t about getting a man. That’s not what the movie’s about. It was a confusing ending because it made it seem like she won because she got Sean, which wasn’t really our intention, but I can understand how audiences saw it that way. So we actually changed the ending of the first movie from what it had been, and we shot the ending where they got together at the end. It’s a flash mob scene where he proposes to her and it’s on YouTube and it’s an extra on the DVD, but we didn’t use it. So, we did get them together and that turned out to not be what audiences were wanting.
Why decide to kill him off in this one?
The truth is that it did not come from me. That was a decision made after I was involved with the script. So, you would have to ask the other writer.
It was interesting how it’s assumed that when Stephanie goes to Capri, Emily will want revenge on her for everything that previously happened. But it seems like that wasn’t Emily’s intention, especially since she saved her from being killed. Would you say Emily is a real friend to Stephanie, and is their friendship something you wanted to focus more on in this sequel?
In the first movie, we start them as friends and they end up as arch-enemies. We thought it would be interesting in the second movie to do the reverse arc. So they start out as enemies, and they become unlikely friends by the end. The thing that the audience expects is that Emily has some really dark plan up her sleeve for revenge on Stephanie. And if we did that, it would just play directly into the audience’s expectation. So, we wanted to subvert that expectation that Emily actually regards Stephanie as a friend, which may seem odd, but she really does not have very many friends in her life. She doesn’t have anyone she can trust, and she knows that at her core, Stephanie is a good person, that she is somebody with integrity and that she’s not evil. She really wants to have an ally on this trip where she’s venturing into a very dangerous world that she doesn’t really know and she needs a sidekick and protection. And ironically, that’s Stephanie.
Emily was a really good friend to Dante by helping to keep his relationship a secret. Do you think that she’s misunderstood?
I think she’s very complicated, and I think the best villains in cinema are very human and very complicated. And they, of course, have moments of sincerity and moments of vulnerability and moments of kindness because they’re human. And so I do think that she has moments of humanity that are just as surprising as all of the other twists and turns.
Emily (Blake Lively), Dante (Michele Morrone), Vicky (Alex Newell) and Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) in Another Simple Favor.
Lorenzo Sisti/Amazon Content Services
At the end, we see Emily stay in Italy and Charity go to jail, though everyone thinks it’s the real Emily. Why didn’t she come forward and say what really happened?
She’s already in so much trouble, and she’s at risk of going back to prison for her previous crimes. She wants to be free and ultimately to be with her son. At the end of the second movie, she finds a solution that checks every box. It gets her everything she wants, and Charity deserves to go to prison for what she’s done. So it’s not like it’s unfair to Charity.
Dante’s mom hands her a letter asking for another simple favor, but what revenge is she looking for now that Charity will be behind bars?
I guess we’ll have to find out in the third movie. The truth is I don’t even know! (Laughs.)
Well, that leads me to, is there more to her story you’d want to explore in a potential third film?
Definitely. I mean, it’s been talked about and I think we’d all love to revisit these characters in this story in success.
Do you think we’d have to wait another seven years?
No, I don’t, because honestly, as Paul pointed out, we didn’t even have the idea for the sequel until several years after the first movie had come out. So, I think now it’s on a more accelerated track if the second movie is successful.
With Emily staying in Italy, what does her future look like while kind of hiding out there?
I don’t really know. I will have to roll up my sleeves and figure it out if I’m invited back to the party.
Has the noise about It Ends With Us been a distraction surrounding this film, and how has that affected you?
I haven’t experienced it, I feel for what she’s going through right now, but last weekend, we had the premiere, and it was just a celebration about the work and the film, and that noise didn’t really come into play as far as I could tell. But no, it doesn’t really affect me at all. I’m excited about the movie. I’m excited for people to see it. We have so many fans of the first movie who have been looking forward to it, and I hope that they’re able to come to it and focus on what’s in the movie and not all of the extra stuff that really has nothing to do with the movie.
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Another Simple Favor is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
For the first 100 days of Donald Trump‘s second presidency, it looked like the entertainment industry might just escape the huge costs and relentless chaos unleashed by his radical attempts to remake global trade.
Entertainment products like movies were exempt from Trump’s original “Liberation Day” tariffs because they are classified as services, rather than physical goods. The industry also took some assurance from the fact that films and series, much like big tech, represent one of the United States’ strongest trade surpluses, because of how much more Hollywood blockbusters bring in from abroad compared to foreign content’s slim earnings within the United States. But in a Sunday night post to Truth Social, the president revealed — in screaming all-caps — that he’s targeting the film business next.
“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” Trump wrote. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”
He continued: “Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick replied to Trump’s statements on X (formerly Twitter) by writing, “We’re on it.”
Jon Voight, whom Trump named one of his “special ambassadors” to Hollywood, is the instigator of the president’s sudden interest in film production, according to several sources contacted by THR. The actor and his manager Steven Paul have been taking meetings with leaders of the Hollywood guilds and studios about a proposal to Trump for how to boost U.S. production with a domestic film incentive. So far, the president appears to have interpreted that advice in the punitive language he prefers — tariffs as stick, rather than incentive as carrot.
From the global film industry, the early reaction is a predictable mix of dread and total confusion.
“Hollywood is a flagship industry and it was naive to think it wouldn’t be impacted by Trump’s broader tariff war,” says Henning Molfenter, the former head of film and TV production at Germany’s Studio Babelsberg, who has overseen the international shoots of such big-budget U.S. features as the Russo brothers’ Captain America: Civil War and Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix Resurrections, as well as Wes Anderson’s upcoming feature, The Phoenician Scheme, which will premiere in Cannes. “But it’s not clear what will be impacted. Is it just movies, or also streaming series? Is it visual effects, co-productions, international film financing? There’s a huge degree of uncertainty.”
Molfenter echoes a common refrain: “How could this even work?”
At the risk of sane-washing a policy that may or may not ever come to pass, here are eight key questions the industry will be pondering and considering as potential ammunition to push back against the president’s characteristically blunt opening salvo on the film sector.
What films will be hit by tariffs, and will it be retroactive?
The studios have been shooting their biggest films overseas for years, both to take advantage of visually stunning foreign locations and generous rebates and tax incentives to lower their production costs. Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, also heading to Cannes, tapped tax credits in the U.K. and other territories to offset its hefty production budget. Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures’ A Minecraft Movie, the biggest blockbuster of 2025, so far, was mostly shot in New Zealand, with some production in Canada. Likewise, James Cameron’s Avatar franchise, backed by Disney, shot entirely in New Zealand. Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday recently began production in London. The list goes on.
Would Trump’s tariffs apply retroactively to films that have already shot or that have already begun production? If so, the cost to the studios could be enormous. Roughly 45 percent of A Minecraft Movie‘s $875 million global box office haul — the $400 million it made at the U.S. box office — could theoretically be susceptible to Trump’s 100 percent tariff.
And how will the Trump administration classify movies “produced in foreign lands”? Does including any scene shot outside the U.S. qualify? Does a certain percentage of a film’s budget have to come from international production incentives? So far, none of this is clear.
What about Netflix?
Trump’s initial social media missives only mentioned “movies,” but many in the industry assume any entertainment tariff would also apply to series production. That would be a huge blow to Netflix and other streamers — Amazon, Disney+, HBO Max — which have been built on a model of leveraging local production across a global subscriber base. Would Netflix have to pull Squid Game, Money Heist and The Crown from its U.S. service or face tariffs? And how would tariffs even be calculated for the streamers, which offer countless foreign-made titles to U.S. customers? How much of Netflix’s U.S. subscription revenue can be attributed to non-U.S.-produced shows?
Would a tariff bring production back to the United States?
Trump isn’t all wrong when he says film production in America “is DYING.” A report last month from FilmLA, the nonprofit group that handles film permits for the city and county, showed shooting in L.A. decreased more than 22 percent over the three-month period from January to March this year. More than a year after the two strikes that brought the U.S. film and TV business to a standstill, production has not returned in force to L.A. While some production has simply moved across state borders — Marvel has filmed many of its biggest titles in Atlanta, taking advantage of the state’s 30 percent tax credit — there is no doubt runaway production, to London, to Vancouver, to Budapest, Hungary, and Christchurch, New Zealand, has led to a sharp drop in America-made movies. FilmLA reports production has dropped nearly 40 percent in the past decade, and the most recent report from movie industry research firm ProdPro shows production spending in the U.S. overall was $14.54 billion last year, down 26 percent since 2022.
But would a movie tariff actually bring back film production? The main reason the studios and independents go abroad to shoot is money. Making a film in the U.S., which lacks federal tax incentives of the sort found in the U.K., Europe or Australia, can be 30 to 40 percent more expensive. Add to that the cost of U.S. crews, which are pricier than their international counterparts — thanks in part to the strength of American film and TV unions — and it’s unclear whether a tariff would be enough to bring production back home.
Without a domestic rebate to offset the lost incentives abroad, the increased costs of filmmaking in the U.S. will likely mean that studio movies get smaller — or become more digital, with more volume stage and greenscreen shooting or more use of artificial intelligence (though that could create new problems with the guilds, which have strict restrictions on the use of AI).
For small and midsize independent productions, a tariff could simply mean those films don’t get made.
How will other countries respond?
With Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs, many countries had limited recourse for retaliation because the U.S. trade deficit on physical goods in nearly all nations is so enormous. That’s not true for entertainment. The U.S. exports nearly three times as much entertainment as it imports, according to the MPA. Figures from the European Audiovisual Observatory, a media industry think tank, show that U.S. films accounted for 71.1 percent of cinema admissions in Europe in 2023, the latest year for which figures are available, with locally made movies making up just over 25 percent of sales. A tit-for-tat tariff response by international governments would jack up the price of U.S. movies abroad, and, for Hollywood, still struggling to recover from a post-COVID box office dip, it could be devastating.
What happens to the foreign-language distribution business?
Buying foreign-language films for the U.S. has always been a tough business. Trump’s tariffs could make it nearly impossible. Will the small number of successful international film buyers in the U.S. — Neon, Mubi, Sony Pictures Classics — still afford to buy and release the finest French, German and Japanese films in North America when they will cost twice as much under Trump’s tariff? What would it mean for American intellectual life to be effectively walled off from much of the world’s finest cinema?
What about postproduction?
In the same way that they have created production incentives to lure film shooting to their shores, many foreign governments offer similar rebates for postproduction work done within their borders. Would Trump’s movie tariff also target postproduction work completed outside the U.S.? If so, what would become of the likes of New Zealand’s fabled Weta FX and Weta Workshop, Netflix’s Scanline VFX (in Canada and Europe) and the U.K.’s Double Negative and Framestore, among others? More than any other sector of the business, postproduction has become truly global. Can Trump put an end to that?
Can international co-productions survive? In its ongoing fight for survival, the indie film community has learned to use every tool at its disposal to get its movies made — and more often than not, that has meant shooting abroad for rebates and leveraging foreign grants through co-production arrangements. Brady Corbet’s multi-Oscar nominated indie triumph The Brutalist — made for just $9.6 million — probably wouldn’t have been possible in its finished form had it not been set up as a Hungarian/U.K./U.S. co-production, taking advantage of multiple tax incentives and production subsidies, and shot in low-cost Budapest. Midbudget action movies — pretty much every Gerard Butler, Liam Neeson or Jason Statham shoot-’em-up you can think of — rely on budget crews and tax incentives, mainly in Eastern European countries, to make the numbers work. The bulk of new projects being packaged and pitched for the Cannes film market next week involve some form of international co-production or non-U.S. shoot. Has Trump killed the Marché?
Will this actually happen?
At this point in the Trump show, the famously unpredictable president seems to be following a script as tired as any other long-running, low-brow procedural. How likely is it that Trump’s movie tariff will endure in its initial, blunt and far-reaching form, or will it eventually get watered down like many of his other art-of-the-dumb-deal opening gambits? So far, markets seem to be only mildly concerned. Amid a broader slip in stock futures, Disney’s stock was down just over 3 percent in pre-market trading, while Netflix was under by 6 percent and Warner Bros. Discovery down about 4 percent.
In a move that could shake up the entertainment industry, President Trump says he’s directed his administration to put a “100% tariff” on any movies coming into the U.S. that were not produced in this country.
He posted on his Truth Social platform on Sunday that he’s authorized the Department of Commerce and the United States Trade Representative to institute the tariff.
“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!
“Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
For years, Hollywood productions have flocked to countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland and Spain for their tax incentives.
Talking with C-SPAN on Sunday, Trump was asked about the tariffs, and he briefly expounded upon his post and put some of the blame on California Gov. Gavin Newsom in addition to other countries.
“What they’ve done is other nations have been stealing the movies, the moviemaking capabilities from the united States,” he said, adding: “I’ve done some very strong research over the past week, and we’re making very few movies now. Hollywood is being destroyed. Now, you have a … grossly incompetent governor that allowed that to happen, so I’m not just blaming other nations, but other nations have stolen our movie industry. If they’re not willing to make a movie inside the United States, then we should have a tariff on movies that come in. And not only that, governments are actually giving big money. They’re supporting them financially. That’s sort of a threat to our country in a sense.”
Asked for comment, a spokesperson in Newsom’s office said: “Looks like it’s distraction day again in Washington, D.C.”
Meanwhile, top entertainment execs say this would be devastating for TV and not just movies. “Vancouver is over,” said one source.
The MPA has yet to comment.
There are a number of expensive tentpoles due out in the coming months that filmed overseas. Would they be grandfathered in via a grace period or hit with a tariff? And what would the tariff even look like? This was all unlear.
The ultra-pricey Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning (May 23) was shot all over the world, which is one of the key selling points of the globetrotting franchise, which films overseas for the exotic locales, not the tax credits.
Lionsgate’s John Wick spinoff Ballerina (June 6) filmed in the Czech Republic.
Disney and 20th Century’s Avatar: Fire and Ash (Dec. 19) was made in New Zealand, which has become a production hub over the past 20 years after The Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson put it on the map.
Disney sister company Marvel Studios could also be hit by the tariffs. It recently began filming Avengers: Doomsday (May 1, 2026) in London and plans to film Sony co-production Spider-Man: Brand New Day (July 31, 2026) there this year as well. The U.K. offers generous tax incentives that helped lure production away from Atlanta, where Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame filmed.
Disney-owned Lucasfilm is also expected to shoot the Ryan Gosling Star Wars: Starfighter (May 28, 2027) in the United Kingdom this year.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s rival comic book brand DC Studios has been beefing up its London presence, filming Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (June 26, 2026) in London.
There’s a cottage industry of low-budget, VOD movies that shoot in Eastern European countries such as Romania and Bulgaria for the low labor costs and tax incentives. (Think: anything low budget starring an aging action star.)
Trump, of course, last month announced a plan to place at least 10 percent tariffs on goods from every country that trades with the U.S. As a result, the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average both dropped amid fears of a recession. A week later, he said he was putting a “90-day PAUSE” on most of the tariffs, except those against China. The stock market has since rebounded.
6:07 p.m. Sunday, May 4: Added Trump’s quotes to C-SPAN.
8:30 p.m. Sunday, May 4: Added comment from Newsom’s office.
