Can You Make Films In America Anymore?

+ Part One of my 2025 Predictions

Photo by chris robert on Unsplash

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you’ve enjoyed some down time over the holidays or are still enjoying some down time. I’m back at work doing some planning for the year and in the process of that, jotted down some predictions I’ll share over the course of a few newsletters and we’ll revisit in December and see what came true or not. Why not?

But first, check this out…. 👇

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Funding Strategies Bootcamp

I’ll be leading a live cohort starting Jan. 20 for my Funding Strategies Bootcamp. Together we’ll build an actionable finance strategy for your independent film or series project in five weeks. If you’re sitting on a slate of projects that need a kick-start into action, join me to build some momentum early enough in the year to potentially nudge a green-light into being :)

There’s a 20% discount is in effect through Monday 1/6 so click here to secure your spot now.

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The Year US Productions Completely Move Abroad

Before I start with my first prediction of the year you can see what I said before the holidays about my the Financing Strategies that worked for me in 2024 here.

I bring this up because it directly relates to my first prediction that US productions will almost completely move overseas. Whether that’s to Canada, Bulgaria, the UK, Dominican Republic, or Thailand (or other)… more and more countries are advertising their wares to US producers and luring them in with not only competitive tax credits but the promise of lower wages and no union interference.

Obviously there are outliers in the margins - micro budgets who are too small to qualify for international tax credits and are non-union anyway, or on the other end of the spectrum massive studio films where stars have the power to dictate where they want to shoot. Outside of that, it’s just gotten too expensive to make most independent films in the US. I’ll go so far to say that if you’re not budgeting for outside the US at least as an exercise you’re doing your project a huge disservice.

For every project I’m overseeing or advising on right now, we’re budgeting for multiple international locations and running analysis on where to get the best bang for our buck.

In fact, many of the consulting inquires I receive are for strategizing international production options by leveraging my global network of production partners to bring big scale projects on small budgets to life.

It’s gotten to the point where even bigger budget projects (outside of mega budgets) can’t afford to shoot here - or they can’t get the amount of shooting days the director wants for the price they can afford to pay. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Plus there’s very few US locations that can’t be replicated in other parts of the world anymore - it’s incredible.

So that’s my soft ball prediction for this year, the wheels of which are already in motion and picking up speed.

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What’s your thoughts on US production fully moving overseas?

Hit me up in the comments below!

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I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the day and speak to you again soon!

Stacey

PS: Don’t forget the 20% discount on my Funding Strategies Bootcamp ends Monday. Learn more and register here.

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