Filming took place in 20 towns in North Jersey for the hit summer comedy “Happy Gilmore 2,” which generated a record-breaking 46.7 million views on Netflix during its premiere weekend.
Paterson and Cape May both featured prominently in the recent Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” and the second season of the popular “Severance” series returned to film at the iconic Bell Works in Holmdel.
If those backdrops seemed familiar to New Jerseyans, that’s because the state is increasingly popular for location shoots. Look no further than a growing state program that has helped streamline filming in many towns and cities to make them more attractive to TV and movie productions, while several major studio projects also are planned with the help of robust tax incentives.
“The film industry is starting to see that New Jersey is a large back lot,” said Elizabeth Parchment, team leader for marketing and strategic initiatives for the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission, which estimates that the industry generated nearly $800 million in economic activity in the state last year.
Much of the traffic appears to be driven by Netflix, which is scouting New Jersey locations in advance of its 1.1 million-square-foot studio project that’s coming to Fort Monmouth by 2028.
To speed the process, the commission in 2022 launched Film Ready New Jersey — a multistep program that educates and certifies municipalities and counties to attract and support film and television production. It provides training on the basics of location shooting and legal and logistical issues like permitting fees and marketing. There are now 43 “film-ready communities,” including 19 municipalities and two counties that were added in early August, while another 50 are in the pipeline for certification later this year, Parchment said. Film Ready towns adhere to a uniform and transparent fee schedule and a set of rules that make it easier to film over multiple locations in more than one town. It also requires that towns have a designated liaison for filming and upload pictures of potential locations to a local Film Ready website.
The program is designed to streamline the process in a state with 564 municipalities and 21 counties — each with its own governance — and make it easier for production companies to do business. It appears to be working. “It’s a net positive because it brings a lot of filming to New Jersey. No other state is doing what we’re doing,” said Moshe Gross, principal of Reset Locations of Lakewood, which brokers deals between property owners and production companies and manages site logistics.
Film Ready New Jersey “provides clarity and consistency for the benefit of the towns and the productions that come here,” Parchment said. “We tell towns this is not a revenue raiser — you’re not going to plug your budget, but you’ll see an economic boon for smaller businesses in your town that support the film and television ecosystem.”