Federal film tax credit gains bipartisan backing as Trump, Pelosi, Schiff, and Omar align on Hollywood production

A federal tax incentive plan to return motion picture production to the United States has drawn an unlikely bipartisan coalition to President Donald Trump's side, with Sen. Adam Schiff, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and Rep. Ilhan Omar each signaling support. The development comes as Paramount escalates its threat to leave California and a Democratic attorney general's antitrust lawsuit stalls the Warner Bros. merger.

The economic argument behind the push arrived in clearest form from Mel Gibson, one of three special envoys Trump named to Hollywood alongside Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone. Gibson told Fox News that for a recent film, it was cheaper to fly the entire crew to Europe for three days than to spend a single day shooting in Los Angeles. Ex-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger encountered the same production cost problem during his time in office, Gibson said, but was met with "obstacles."

Schiff, who represented studio-heavy Burbank in Congress before winning his Senate seat, posted this week that he is "in strong agreement with the president." The Democrat, who led Trump's first impeachment trial, called on both parties to "work together... get this done and bring the movie magic back to America" and said Congress "should immediately take up and pass a federal film tax incentive to bring back these good-paying jobs that we've lost to other countries."

Pelosi's position was brief. "We've been promoting that for a long time," she told Fox News Digital on the Capitol grounds. "I'm glad he finally arrived at it."

Omar came at the issue from a state-level angle. She has worked separately to attract film projects to Minneapolis and pointed to the 1996 Coen Brothers film "Fargo," starring William H. Macy, and the "Mighty Ducks" series of the 1990s, starring Emilio Estevez and Joshua Jackson, as evidence of Minnesota's production capacity. When St. Paul ended its film subsidies recently, she said it "made it less fun trying to run into people who were actually doing the production." A federal program, she said, "could be a really cool thing [and] also bring us money to states that can use it."

What to watch

California Gov. Gavin Newsom staked his own position last year: "California built the film industry and we're ready to bring even more jobs home. Now it's time for a real federal partnership to Make America Film Again." With the White House and bipartisan voices aligned across both chambers, congressional action on a federal film tax bill is the next concrete step. Paramount's decision on its California footprint and the resolution of the Warner Bros. merger are the industry read-through points that follow.