Nearly a year after lawmakers in Trenton approved tax credits to draw movie and television production back to New Jersey, revenue from the industry is expected to more than double, and could mean hundreds of millions of dollars for New Jersey businesses, advocates say.

"We’re going to see a tremendous jump in revenue," said Steven Gorelick, executive director of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission. "It’s impossible to say exactly (how much) because we’re in uncharted territory."

Credits were approved by the New Jersey Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy in July 2018. It was a reversal from nearly a decade before, when Gov. Chris Christie suspended them, and later let them expire, in an effort to curb the budget.

“We had plenty of work in New Jersey, and then it just all went away at once,” recalled Lou Porzio, an Old Bridge-based carpenter of 30 years who had worked on the Asbury Park sets of "The Sopranos" and "City by the Sea" (2002), as well as the Bayonne-shot HBO series "Oz" (1997) and Steven Spielberg's Howell work on "War of the Worlds" (2005).

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But in just one year, production is back — although some longtime industry workers say that has not translated into more local jobs yet.

Still, movies such as "Joker," from the Batman series, and "The Many Saints of Newark," the 1960s-set prequel to the iconic HBO mob series "The Sopranos," have already been shot in the state. This summer, Spielberg is set to shoot his adaptation of "West Side Story" starring Rachel Zegler of Clifton in Paterson.

City officials have said there were 23 productions filmed in Paterson in 2018, and the city is only getting busier. By late May, according to Gorelick, there were three projects shooting in Paterson on the same day.

HBO has filmed its 2020 miniseries "The Plot Against America," based on the novel by Newark native author Philip Roth, in locations across North Jersey, including Paterson, Newark and Jersey City.

Before the tax credits took effect, the film and television production industry brought $67 million in revenue to the state in 2017, according to Gorelick, through independent films, commercials and reality television. He said he expects more than double that number for 2018, which is still being calculated, and even higher for 2019.

“The impact has been immediate," said Michael Uslan, producer of the "Batman" film franchise and chairman of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission, last year.

And New Jersey is not alone. The financial impact of film production has long been seen across the country, including in neighboring New York, and in Georgia, which is one of the busiest production states in the country.

(Get an early glimpse at "Joker," starring Joaquin Phoenix, in the film's trailer at the top of this story.)

How tax credits work

Gov. Phil Murphy signed the Garden State Film and Digital Media Jobs Act last July.

The law provides up to $75 million in tax credits for film production and up to $10 million for digital media per year over five years. The Office of Legislative Services has said the credits could cost the state up to $425 million in direct revenue.

The state's film and digital media tax credit program provides a 30 percent tax credit on qualified film production expenses, with bonus credits also potentially available if the production meets diversity standards.

Eligible films must spend at least 60 percent of their total budget through vendors authorized to do business in New Jersey, or spend more than $1 million in qualified expenses in New Jersey.

The tax incentives' effect was immediate. By September, NBC had turned the former Izod Center sports and concert arena in East Rutherford, shuttered in 2015, into a studio for its series "The Enemy Within."

“The fact that NBC has now taken over the old Izod Center and is making television productions there and turning it into an asset that’s generating dollars and jobs for New Jersey is amazing," said Uslan. "We are inundated at the Film Commission with requests for studios, networks, production companies, cable companies, everyone that is looking to work in New Jersey again."

Chris Christie vs. 'Jersey Shore'

This flurry of production activity represents a seismic shift from how things were across the state just a few years ago.

Former Gov. Chris Christie suspended the state's film and television production tax credit program in 2010, citing budgetary reasons, and worked to block the 2009 credit for the hit MTV reality show "Jersey Shore." Christie let the program expire in 2015.

After Christie moved against the former tax program, "everybody pulled out of New Jersey," said Porzio, the carpenter.

Porzio said the current program appears to be off to "a slow start" as it approaches its one-year mark.

The extent of his Jersey work lately has been some shooting in Paterson for "The Hunt," Jordan Peele's upcoming Amazon Prime series about Nazi hunting starring Al Pacino.

Porzio said he's hopeful for the future. "I'm all in," he said. "I'd love to do work in New Jersey."

Jeremy Selenfriend of Hasbrouck Heights-based specialty prosthetic makeup company Monster In My Closet has been in the business for 17 years. Before Christie's actions brought production to "a screeching halt," he said, his work was split evenly between jobs in New York and New Jersey.

Since then, Selenfriend has worked on "Elementary" for CBS and is now involved with "The Hunt."

“Unfortunately, all of my calls are still bringing me to New York," Selenfriend said. "Production in New Jersey is still pretty new, so I’m longing for the day that I don’t have to drive through a tunnel or (over) a bridge every single day.”

"Our business is about contacts, and most of the contacts I have are (for) things we're working on in New York City," said longtime stuntman and stunt coordinator Peter Bucossi. "But New Jersey is starting to flourish."

In the business since 1981, the Berkeley Heights-based Bucossi worked on "The Sopranos," he said, "from pilot to finish," among other series.

Even when he worked on "Win Win," the 2011 high school wrestling drama by New Providence native Tom McCarthy (2015's "Spotlight") set in McCarthy's Union County hometown, Bucossi had to cross state lines.

“We didn’t shoot anything in New Jersey," he said. "We shot everything in New York, New York state because of the tax incentives.”

It's a story that repeated itself time and again in the last decade or so. Acclaimed New Jersey-set film and television projects such as "American Hustle" (2013), "Freeheld" (2015) and "Boardwalk Empire" (2010 to 2014) were all filmed outside of the state.

Tom Bernard, a commissioner for the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission and co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, said in 2018 that "Boardwalk Empire" had originally wanted to shoot in Asbury Park.

“The state wouldn’t give them a rebate and I guess the city had to follow suit," Bernard said. "And so they went to Coney Island (in Brooklyn) and spent $300 million over three and a half years in Coney Island.

"Imagine if they had $300 million to spend in Asbury Park: there would have been studio space created, the local municipality — in terms of police, fire, all of those services — would have had tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of overtime working around the shooting."

Such a shoot, Bernard said, would have employed thousands of extras and pumped money into local businesses from lumber to hotels and beyond.

'The Sopranos' movie transformed Newark

Now, years later, the productions have come into the state and are spending money.

"Joker," director Todd Phillips' origin story for the Dark Knight's arch-nemesis of DC Comics legend due out Oct. 4, was filmed on the streets of Jersey City and Newark.

"The Many Saints of Newark" recently took over its namesake city, as well as areas of Jersey City and Paterson, for shooting before it hits theaters in 2020.

“It’s extraordinary what’s happening," said Gorelick. "You have a movie like ‘Joker,’ or a movie like ‘The Many Saints of Newark,’ they’re hiring hundreds of extras. They’re hiring production assistants. They’re spending all kinds of money.

"To transform Branford Place into ’67 Newark, they had to buy out all the businesses for several days and change their frontage and such, and they were willing to pay to do that because in order to avail themselves of the tax credit to the maximum, they need to spend the money locally and so they’re spending millions and millions."

Barbara E. Kauffman, president of Executive Women of New Jersey, has welcomed the wave of productions back to the state.

“It really not only is good for the state's economy but it also boosts the economy of the municipalities where the filming is taking place, providing new job opportunities, generating additional revenue,” said Kauffman.

Kauffman, also executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Newark Regional Business Partnership, said the filmmaking developments tie in with the Newark 2020 initiative designed to increase the number of local residents working in the city.

She’s also no stranger to the film industry, having served as an investor on the 2018 Jamie Lee Curtis film “An Acceptable Loss.” That picture was filmed primarily in Evanston, Illinois, where Kauffman said credits and investments resulted in $3 million in direct and indirect jobs from crew to catering to hotels, “just every aspect of commerce and business in the municipality.”

New Jersey also can look north to the Westchester County village of Tarrytown, New York. The likes of "The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" and "The Blacklist" have filmed there in recent years.

Tarrytown has hosted 57 filming dates in the last five years, taking in permit revenues of approximately $113,000, as well as welcoming tourists seeking out the filming locations, according to village administrator Richard Slingerland.

Production does pose some difficulties, according to Slingerland, including disruption of local businesses when filming happens during normal business hours, the impact on residents during night shoots, and the loss of parking spaces to filming trucks and crew cars.

"Overall the experience is positive," Slingerland said, "and Tarrytown is happy to work with filming agencies and movie production companies who would like to film here."

Trouble in Georgia?

Meanwhile the future of one of the country's busiest production states is in question. Georgia hosted 455 film and television projects in 2018, generating $2.7 billion in direct spending with a total economic impact of $9.5 billion, according to the state.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Georgia also has the most expensive film incentives program on the continent, with $800 million in production credits in 2017. By comparison, California gave out $330 million in credits and New York was responsible for $420 million.

But production companies have already begun to cool on Georgia in light of the state's restrictive "heartbeat bill" abortion law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp in May.

Both the Lionsgate film "Barb and Star Go To Vista Del Mar" with Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo and the Amazon series "The Power," initially scheduled to shoot in Georgia, are going elsewhere. Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said the streaming service would "rethink our entire investment in Georgia" if the law goes into effect as scheduled in January 2020.

Meanwhile, New Jersey is getting ready for its closeup. The Ocean County Film and Television Advisory Commission was established by the Board of Freeholders last July to serve as a liaison to and collaborate with the state film and television commission.

In June, Murphy's office announced that the state Economic Development Authority had approved the first awards of his film tax credit program, totaling $6.2 million for four films including "Besa" with Chazz Palminteri; "The Atlantic City Story" starring Princeton native Jessica Hecht; the Kearny-set ABC series "Emergence"; and "Gimme Liberty," a prequel to the 2014 drama "Gimme Shelter."

Viewers, in other words, should get used to seeing a lot more of New Jersey on their screens.

"What we were missing in order to level the playing field with our neighboring states and other states across the country was the tax credit program," Gorelick said. "That did the trick, and now the floodgates have opened.”