EXCLUSIVE: Hawking a tariff- and tax incentives-heavy plan to “Make Hollywood Great Again,” Jon Voight believes Donald Trump is the greatest president since Abraham Lincoln. The Oscar winner has said Trump loves the entertainment business so much much that he wants to save it from itself. But with the the Midnight Cowboy star and his inner circle making a number of films themselves overseas and in Canada, their hypocrisy seems glaring and perhaps self-serving.
To that, Voight was unavailable Thursday, but we did talk with the Trump-anointed Special Ambassador to Hollywood‘s special adviser Steven Paul and SP Media Group/Atlas Comics President Scott Karol to talk their overseas productions, tariffs, incentives and more.
Fresh off a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Trump and Voight this weekend, the duo have been the architects behind the MHGA proposal to Trump to bring production back to America, and Southern California specifically. Panned in recent days, the pitch, which Deadline published exclusively this week, saw Trump threatening on May 4 to punish runaway productions. That punishment would be “a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands,” as he wrote Sunday on Truth Social.
Citing conversations with Hollywood guilds, execs and state officials, Paul and Karol say their five-page proposal isn’t the end-all, be-all in the matter and “was for discussion purposes.” And, yes, a discussion is taking place. Still, the fact that they and Voight have made movies like this year’s High Ground and 2024’s Air Force One Down in Bulgaria and 2023’s Mercy in Vancouver, Canada puts a stink on their MHGA stance.
DEADLINE: A majority of your SP Media productions are shot outside the U.S., i.e. Bulgaria and Canada. This is a topic that is coming up as you make the “Make Hollywood Great Again” proposal. Is the whole impetus to getting this plan off the ground connected with constantly shooting outside the U.S.?
STEVEN PAUL: While it’s nice to visit the south of France for Cannes, when you’re working all the time, you’d rather be back home. Not only that, but [here] in Hollywood. This place was built for the movie business. It’s completely nuts that it’s a ghost town right now. You walk around the studios and you find them completely empty.
DEADLINE: OK, but you’ve been shooting movies in Bulgaria and Canada, don’t you think it’s hypocritical to be behind the “Make Hollywood Great” initiative when you’ve done nothing to deal with that?
PAUL: We are the exact ones that are shouting out how we have to rally together, create incentives and make movies back here in the U.S. Everybody is being chased overseas, including us. We’ve already committed to make three movies in Hollywood and buying that little studio. So it’s not hypocritical; we are the example of what has happened.
All of us [producers] can’t make it work here. We’d love to make it work here. We were forced to go else. It’s an industry in trouble, we need government help, we all need to come together.
DEADLINE: You’re in the process of trying to open a studio here?
PAUL: As early as next week, we’re going to close on a small studio. It’s not Paramount Pictures. A small studio that has a few soundstages. So we’re trying to make our commitment to Hollywood to show that we want to make films here. We’re talking about already three movies to be shooting here.
SCOTT KAROL: I want to back up and talk about this to note that this isn’t about producers going around and chasing the last dollar. Not just us, but in the last two months, and in the last four days, we’ve talked with a number of producers, studios and streamers, and this is about the difference of making a movie or TV show and not making it. It’s not about making more money off of it. It comes down to profit and loss. There’s a calculation that has to be made and you need to go where you can afford to shoot the film. The increased costs of shooting in America right now is the difference between profitability on a lot of these films — studio films — and not profitability. And over a slate of films, that leads to not making movies. If studios aren’t breaking even on films, they can’t make films. This is about somewhat leveling the playing field. Make things comparable and not chasing the last dollar, which I call the never-ending race to the bottom, and create an environment where producers, studios and streamers can make movies closer to home in the U.S.
From left: Steven Paul, Scott Karol and Jon Voight
Getty
DEADLINE: Is the new lot in Southern California?
PAUL: It’s here in the Los Angeles area.
DEADLINE: What do you think of California Gov. Gavin Newsom‘s pitch for a $7.5 billion federal Tax Incentive?
PAUL: It’s nice to say, but you really get involved and try to do these things. We can’t just make statements and throw ideas out. We’ve been trying to sit with him. That hasn’t happened as of yet, but we’ve been trying to meet with him to see how we can work together and make something like that take place.
KAROL: In Gavin’s tweet he put out, he suggested we use the “successful” California program as the basis of the federal incentive. In that document that was published by Deadline, there’s a segment that talks about the California tax credit and the problems with it. It’s not competitive with other states. The cap is so artificially low to compete with places like Georgia, doesn’t include above the line, it’s not transferable unless it’s an indie production. We’ve heard from a number of studios and streamers that it’s incredibly problematic for them. You think, “Oh, studios can write that off.” No they can’t; it’s only against California income. So unless you’re Disney and you have Disneyland here, or Universal can, but a lot of these companies are structured in such a way as to not have California income or to minimize California income. It’s not transferable, so it’s not that valuable. There’s no reciprocal provision like Section 181 in the Federal Tax Code in the state level, so your state tax return looks different from your federal tax return. There’s all kinds of things that would need to change the California program to make it work. Then it would be a great blueprint for federal tax incentive, but it’s not as it currently stands.
DEADLINE: From studio execs we’ve spoken with, what has them nervous are the whole points about the tariffs. They’re asking: Shouldn’t these be incentives rather than punitive measures? Are you still going to explore tariffs? It has a lot of people nervous.
PAUL: The document we put forward to the president was for discussion purposes. There were ideas that we’ve gotten from an assortment of conversations around town, and not everyone agrees on everything, as you know. We’re a big supporter of getting tax credits here in the U.S. to make us competitive around the world. Having been with the president, he’s an entertainment lover, he’s all for making the entertainment business as he said, “bigger and better and greater than ever before.” He means it. He wants to do everything that he possibly can to try to help. So if anything was perceived to be hurting the business, I don’t believe he wants to do anything like that. He wants to do everything to be helpful.
DEADLINE: The other dilemma with tariffs on movie productions — it’s digital, that can’t be tariffed. It’s not like a car or a washing machine.
KAROL: Obviously, we’re not policy experts when it comes to that or the legislation. I think that the concept of having some kind of stick along with all the carrots we proposed was the idea. Whether you call it a tariff or if you call it something else, is not really the point. If you level the playing field in such a way that all the heads of studios and streamers, that all things being relatively equal or close to being equal, they’d only choose to shoot in America. Unless there was some creative reason to not do that. The idea is to make a creative environment where you have created that level playing field, but there is a quote-unquote “bad actor” who decides to shoot someplace else, there’s some sort of penalty to that. There’s some sort of stick to enhance the carrot even more. I think people got hung up too much on the word tariff. The idea is that there’s carrots and sticks in this world.
PAUL: We just put all these thoughts down, everybody had different ideas and stuff, all that was a document for talking points. It wasn’t meant to be shared with the world.
RELATED: Jon Voight’s Plan Raises Prospect Of Reinstating Fin-Syn Rules As TV Series Enter Tariff Conversation
DEADLINE: Fin-syn, where did that come from?
PAUL: It was one of the conversations that came out of talking to producers, directors, unions and everyone. That represents all the different sections of conversation on people’s mind.
KAROL: Fin-syn isn’t just about economics, it’s about creativity as well. You look back to the television being made prior to the dismantling of fin-syn — Norman Lear, the Golden Age of Television when the creatives owned the show. There’s been an incredible desire for an increased creativity to be injected back into the medium that’s being produced. We’ve heard that again and again from the producers. Since that proposal on Deadline came out, they loved this concept of fin-syn.
DEADLINE: Are you considering a certain budget range when it comes to the tax credits? Because the mid-sized films are really hurt when it comes to indie financing.
KAROL: As a percentage of budget, I think you find that bigger studios may be affected less by a percentage of budget. A big studio can be impacted $20 million-$30 million, and that can be the difference between profitability and loss. On a smaller film, and I’ll go down to a $5 million-$10 million film; a $5 million film shot in Eastern Europe can cost $10 million-$12 million in the U.S., and can be the difference between making the movie or not making the movie. I would say indie producers are effected equally across the board from a percentage basis. There are some breaks on labor rates for Teamsters, and IA, for lower-budgeted films, but it’s still infinitely more expensive.
DEADLINE: What’s your timeline? The studios and MPA are about to meet…
KAROL: We’re in direct contact with all of the groups we met with including the MPA, the guilds and producers. Our plan is to work in conjunction on a go-forward basis and be in the room together on what the details of these proposals look like and what ends up being legislation.
DEADLINE: Would you say you’re more on the tax credit side than the tariffs side?
PAUL: Absolutely.
