For years, we were told that if North Carolina didn’t keep writing generous checks to Hollywood, the cameras would stop rolling, the studios would empty out, and thousands of jobs would vanish overnight.
That didn’t happen.
Last week the North Carolina Department of Commerce released a list of 2025 film projects that generated $185,521,578 in estimated direct, in-state production expenditures. According to the North Carolina Film Office, this is the fourth-highest year-end total since the current version of the North Carolina Film and Entertainment Grant program went into effect in 2015.
North Carolina continues to host a wide range of television and streaming productions. Among the recent TV and streaming projects, “Beast Games” filmed Season 2, while “Top Chef” filmed Season 23. “Blue Ridge: The Series” completed filming on Season 2, and “RJ Decker” filmed its pilot before returning to begin production on Season 1. Meanwhile, “The Hunting Wives “ began filming Season 2 after filming Season 1 here.
Feature-length films have also been active statewide including “Bad Counselors,” “Driver’s Ed,” and “May and the Woodsman” filmed in the Northwest. Productions in the Piedmont Triad region included “The Bard” and “Widow.”
The Department of Commerce also points to several projects that where filmed in North Carolina and debuted in 2025, including “The Waterfront,” “The Runarounds,” Season 3 of “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” Additional feature films that were shot in North Carolina and released in 2025 include “Roofman,” “Christy,” “Merv,” and the critically acclaimed “A Little Prayer.”
The made-for-television/streaming sequel “A Grand Biltmore Christmas” is also filming in North Carolina.
It’s great news for the state and for the industry. Mild weather, a variety of landscapes, a cadre of top-notch trained industry professionals, and our right-to-work policies make the state an increasingly attractive place to make magic.
It also speaks to the work of the North Carolina Film Office within the NC Department of Commerce. The film office coordinates administration of the state’s 25% Film and Entertainment Grant rebate program.
The John Locke Foundation’s position on incentives has maintained that the state government should not be devoting public resources to elevating select industries and should instead maintain neutral, across-the-board policies, like tax cuts and lower spending and regulation, to allow every sector and every size business to benefit. It is not an “investment” as so often purported. In fact, states that offer film incentive programs see a negative returnfor their dollar.
That said, with more than a decade under our belt, North Carolina’s experience with film grants and incentives offers a useful lesson in economic policy: government doesn’t need to subsidize and pick winners and losers for an industry to survive and even thrive.
The state first began actively courting film productions back in 2000 and by 2005, lawmakers adopted a refundable tax credit equal to 15% of qualifying in-state spending. By 2010, that credit expanded to 25%, with higher caps per production.
Following launch of the credits, North Carolina became home to major television series and feature films. The show Dawson’s Creek, starring the late actor James Van Der Beek, was not among the productions that benefited from the program, having started filming in 1998, but it certainly put Wilmington on the film industry’s radar. Van Der Beek died last week at the age of 48 after a battle with cancer and remains a treasured part of North Carolina’s entertainment history.
Still, supporters credited the prior incentive program for industry’s growth here. The old refundable credit structure meant that if the credit exceeded a company’s tax liability, the state cut a check for the difference. In other words, taxpayers were directly subsidizing selected productions.
By 2014, lawmakers faced a broader question. Should North Carolina’s economic strategy rely on targeted subsidies for specific industries? Or should it focus on creating a stable, competitive environment for all businesses?
The Republican-led General Assembly allowed the refundable tax credit to expire at the end of 2014. Critics predicted disaster. Industry advocates warned that productions would flee and that North Carolina would lose its place as a premier film destination. For those who were not privy to the inner workings of the state legislature, you can only imagine the intensity of lobbying efforts in Raleigh.
Instead of eliminating taxpayer-paid support entirely, lawmakers replaced the open-ended credit with a capped Film and Entertainment Grant Program in 2015. The new system still offers a 25% rebate, but funding is limited by annual appropriations. While it still means that your state tax dollars are going to a specific industry, it stopped some of the bleeding with a more controlled, more transparent, and less automatic system than the old refundable credit.
And crucially, the industry did not disappear.
Production levels certainly have fluctuated, as they do across the country and across industries. But North Carolina remains home to major sound stages, experienced crews, and ongoing television and film projects. The state continues to attract productions not because it writes the largest subsidy checks, but because it offers something more durable: a strong overall business climate.
North Carolina consistently ranks among the top states for business. It has maintained competitive tax rates, regulatory stability, right-to-work protections, and sustained population growth. Those policies benefit manufacturers, technology firms, financial services companies, and, yes, film producers.
This is the key distinction. Broad-based economic policy creates an environment where industries succeed on merit. When government chooses to privilege one industry with special tax treatment, it implicitly asks every other taxpayer or small businesses to pick up the tab.
Supporters of aggressive incentives often argue that we should match other states’ incentive offers, but that logic leads to a race to the bottom. States competing to offer larger and larger subsidies and eroding trust with taxpayers who want to keep more of their own money, or see the state apply the funds to other state government functions.
In this case, North Carolina chose a different path, but the feared collapse never came. The 2014 debate reads like a familiar script: dire warnings, predictions of mass exodus, and claims that reform would be catastrophic. A decade later, the evidence suggests something far less dramatic.
As we head into the short legislative session and budget discussions this spring, perhaps creative approaches to spending less should be front and center. Both sides could get what they want if we approach our state budget and state policy with creativity and restraint. Spending less forces thinking differently and could allow both sides to achieve their priorities, without worrying that the sky will fall if we don’t write bigger checks.
