Beautiful coastlines. Swamps. Vibrant neighborhoods and urban scenes. What’s not to like about shooting scripted Hollywood films and television series in Florida? Well — the cost.
It’s much more “reasonable to shoot in Atlanta or Louisiana and pretend it's Florida,” said Bill Lawrence, a Hollywood producer best known for television series like Scrubs and Ted Lasso.
Florida’s film and TV industry has been in decline since the state dissolved its last major financial incentive program nearly a decade ago, which had offered performance-based incentives like cash rebates and tax credits to attract productions.
But amid the state’s struggles to lure big-budget projects is a persistent marketing push from local film commissions, independent and major filmmakers to move forward with motion pictures across South Florida.
"I think limitations breed more creativity,” said Edson Jean, a Miami-based independent filmmaker.
Lawrence, despite his concerns, shot the upcoming Apple TV+ drama series Bad Monkey, starring Vince Vaughn , in Wynwood, Key West and the Bahamas . It’s based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Florida native and former Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen.
"Carl is so embedded in Florida and in Florida history. I thought it was really, really important that we actually shot in Florida — the Keys for the Keys and Miami for Miami,” Lawrence told WLRN.
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The project was shot without incentives. Lawrence, who has close family ties in Central Florida, said he and Hiaasen convinced Apple TV+ to shoot Bad Monkey in South Florida for authenticity reasons, despite Hollywood “not crushing it right now after all of the [Hollywood] strikes, financially.”
As part of one of the richest companies in the planet, Apple TV+ is often seen by industry insiders as able to operate outside the financial norms of the business.
"We were able to shut down Duval Street and shoot in Key West for a second. So we had a lot of help from good people that obviously want production there,” Lawrence said.
“But it's always going to be super hard to be competitive for Florida until they have the same production tax incentives that these other states nearby have,” he added.
Incentive money dried up much earlier than expected
Before its steep decline, the state attracted films such as Oscar-nominated Apollo 13 (1995), Oscar-winning Moonlight (2016) and TV series Burn Notice (2007-2013) and Dexter (2006 to 2013).
Florida was ranked third in the country two decades ago for film production revenues, just behind California and New York.
Between 2005 and 2009 the state saw successful returns when it invested as much as $25 million per year on tax rebates, said Sandy Lighterman, Film Commissioner for Broward County and President of Film Florida, a not-for-profit membership organization for the entertainment production industry.
Eventually, Florida’s Legislature approved a budget of nearly $300 million in film incentives and tax credits for 2010-2016, but the allocated funds for the first-come, first-served program were quickly used up. The earliest applicants typically received the incentives, leaving little or nothing for the later years.
Films such as Magic Mike and Dolphin Tale, and TV series such as Ballers and Bloodlines, all shot in Miami, were recipients of the program.
By 2014, the state incentives were completely depleted. Two years later, Florida’s lawmakers ended the film incentive program. A state report concluded it yielded minimal returns on each dollar invested, generating 43 cents for every dollar the program spent.
But the state potentially lost hundreds of millions dollars in revenue from films and TV that were not shot in the state. The full economic impact of the film industry is hard to quantify, Lighterman said.
She estimates that the absence of a state-wide film incentive program has cost the state over $2 billion dollars. This includes more than 300,000 lost hotel room rental nights during production shoots and over 150,000 lost cast and crew jobs for Floridians.
She said performance-based film incentives “are part of the business model for 'Global Hollywood,'" — the uniform, international way of structuring financing for film distribution, exhibition, and production.
“It always comes down to money. It always comes down to incentives. We compete with other countries,” Lighterman told WLRN. “England has a 40% tax incentive. Germany just announced 30%. So we're really in competition with the rest of the world.”
Nowadays, to save production costs, industry professionals have largely relocated their projects to neighboring states such as Georgia — lawmakers there offer 20% in state income tax credits for television and film productions, as long as the company spends a minimum of $500,000 in the state.
Last July, Florida discontinued the Office of Film and Entertainment, its state film commission office, which often pitched and marketed the state to industry stakeholders. But the state has kept a sales tax exemption for motion pictures to help with production needs, like supplies and rental equipment.
Lighterman said if the state brings the film tax incentives back, she’d advocate for better guardrails, such as stiffer limits on the amount of funds each film project receives. But state lawmakers aren't budging right now.
Beyond typical logistics like location and permitting, local film commissions across the state are trying to fill the void and taking it upon themselves to attract film and TV productions to the state.
“You have to kind of add up the ante,” she said. “But we're determined to figure it out so that we can make sure that everybody knows that Florida is always open for business.”
Moving forward despite trouble finding crew
During its heyday, the Florida’s Office of Film and Entertainment, the state film office, had a Los Angeles liaison who would draw production work and talent. Now Florida is one of just a few states without a state-wide film office.
The hit to the Florida film industry makes it “very difficult finding investors” and film crews, even for lower-budget projects, said independent filmmaker Herschel Faber, who recently wrapped up with Ethan Bloom — a dramedy shot in Coconut Grove.
But Faber’s film didn’t qualify for Miami’s new film incentive, the High Impact Film Fund Program (HIFFP) due to its $300,000 budget. One of its tiers requires at least a spend of $500,000 — for a cash rebate of up to 20%.
Other criteria set for the fund are that 90% of the production “must occur in Miami-Dade County” and 60% of the project's labor “must be Miami-Dade County residents.”
Meanwhile, Faber, Chair of Filmmaking at New York Film Academy - South Beach, said Florida’s talented pool of crew members often leave the state for long-term, high-wage job opportunities elsewhere because rarely do major production companies shoot their projects exclusively in the state.
“What you'll often see is a feature that shoots in [another] state, mostly that has a bigger tax credit or rebate and they'll shoot the bulk of the film there, and then they might come to Florida to shoot exteriors,” Faber said.
The recent Apple TV+ series Palm Royale, for example, is set in Palm Beach but mostly shot exterior scenes in the city. And Scarlett Johansson’s 2024 romcom, Fly Me to the Moon, was partially shot at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
“Let's say a movie's set in Miami . T hey might come for like a week and shoot exteriors on Miami Beach. So that winds up really hurting the state, hurting local filmmakers, because there just aren't as many jobs available,” he said.
Independent filmmaker Edson Jean, whose previous feature Ludi, shot in Little Haiti, premiered at SXSW and Miami International Film Festival, said local film commissions and cultural nonprofits attempting to fill the financial gaps for film budgets are typically incentivized to support artists within their respective county boundaries.
Oolite Arts helped fund his feature debut.
“For example, one of the largest art support organizations here in South Florida is Oolite Arts. They support film. They support visual arts but specifically for Miami,” Jean said. “So if you live in Broward, you don't [qualify] for a lot of their funding.”
Broward-Fort Lauderdale provides a tiered incentive program for film, TV, and commercials. For example, a $400,000 minimum spend gives productions a 20% rebate capped at $800,000. Its highest tier requires a $5 million spend.
Data provided to WLRN shows that Bad Boys: Ride or Die, an action-comedy starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, spent $4 million as part of its shoot in Fort Lauderdale. Producers did not apply for the program.
"The only program they could have qualified if they met all the caveats for was the Partial Project program. However, they didn’t shoot the 5 day minimum requirement for that program," Lighterman said.
The Broward-Fort Lauderdale film commission also offers $10,000 grants for emerging filmmakers in Broward County.
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Yanatha Desouvre, a Miami-based screenwriter and producer who is currently shooting his latest short film Stay with Me — a $15,000 project — said, in his experience, it hasn’t been difficult to find local crew members for micro budget films in Florida. He said he’d like to see more “grant opportunities for small and midsize filmmakers.”
“We have very talented people here in South Florida, however, they aren't given opportunities,” Desouvre said. There “seems to be more of a collaborative spirit in Georgia than there is here in South Florida.”
Talia Bethany, associate producer for the Miami-based production company Filled With Magic Productions, is a Broward native who has worked as a production manager for branded commercials and as a production assistant for multiple TV shows. She told WLRN most local crew members don’t want to leave the state despite it “not being a film hub or TV hub.”
“There's a lot of branded work. There's a lot of music videos,” she said. “So it's like a hodgepodge of what kind of work I’m going to get.”
Bethany said it is sometimes discouraging because there is less film work, which has forced her friends to consider more competitive markets.
“We are in a place where our state government is doing things that don't necessarily align with what it means to be creative or want to work in entertainment,” she added.
Creating a different scene altogether
While tourism is often touted as an economic byproduct of local shoots, one South Florida film commission has been on local productions that directly target locals and visitors.
In 2023, Palm Beach County saw unscripted film and TV success, generating a record $247 million from production expenditures, up just under 5 % from 2022.
The Palm Beach County Film & Television Commission turned its sight inwards, running a sponsorship program that supports 160 local production companies with distribution deals on channels like Discovery Channel, PBS or the county’s first tourism channel, Palm Beaches TV.
The county’s film commissioner Michelle Hillery said the projects spotlight local happenings — culture, dining, sports and other attractions .
The channel boasts 100 hours of original programming in close to 5000 of the county’s hotel rooms and numerous public places. While she advocates for more outside production companies working within the state, she said supporting local talent with a platform is just as important.
“Why can't we, or how can we, give some of these production companies more opportunities? And at the same time, use those talents to better market the tourism assets that are right here in the county,” Hillery told WLRN.
She said the county's commission is playing the long game in the film and TV industry.
"Over those 33 years, we've attracted $4.1 billion of economic impact to our community here in Palm Beach County,” she said. “And that's a $199 return on that investment."
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