Central Florida has the locations, talent and tourism infrastructure. Now Orange County is putting public money behind an effort to attract major productions and rebuild a film industry that has increasingly gone elsewhere.
By Marcos A. Tejeda
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief
The Sun Post
ORLANDO, Fla. — July 25, 2026. Florida has rarely lacked the ingredients for the movies.
It has beaches and skylines, historic neighborhoods and modern downtowns, tropical landscapes and sprawling suburbs. It has international airports, one of the world’s largest hospitality industries and a workforce with deep ties to entertainment, theme parks, television and digital production.
What Florida has lacked in recent years is something considerably less glamorous but enormously influential in determining where movies get made:
competitive financial incentives.
That is the challenge Orange County is now attempting to address with a new $25 million Film Incentive Program, a five-year initiative designed to bring movies, television series, streaming productions and commercials to Central Florida.
The program provides $5 million annually from fiscal years 2026 through 2030, funded through Orange County’s Tourist Development Tax. Qualifying productions can receive reimbursements of up to 20% of eligible local expenditures and payroll, with awards capped at $1 million per project.
But the real significance of the program goes well beyond bringing movie stars to Orlando.
Orange County is making a bet that film production can become part of Central Florida’s permanent economy.
And that raises a much bigger question:
Can Orlando become a serious filmmaking destination again?
Florida’s Problem Isn’t Scenery
Few states can offer filmmakers the visual diversity found in Florida.
A production can move from a modern urban environment to beaches, wetlands, small-town America and luxury resorts without leaving the state.
Orlando adds another advantage.
The region already has a massive entertainment ecosystem built around theme parks, live entertainment, simulation, digital media, hospitality and tourism.
Yet when studios determine where to shoot a major movie or television series, scenery is only part of the calculation.
Productions operate on budgets.
A filmmaker may love Florida creatively and still shoot somewhere else financially.
And that is where states such as Georgia and Louisiana gained a major competitive advantage.
Georgia Changed the Competition
Georgia provides perhaps the clearest example of what aggressive film incentives can accomplish.
Its film program offers qualifying productions a 20% base transferable tax credit, with opportunities for additional incentives under the state’s promotional framework.
Louisiana has also maintained a significant motion-picture incentive program, including a 25% base credit on qualifying expenditures, subject to program requirements and potential additional incentives.
Those programs helped change the geography of American filmmaking.
A production developed in Los Angeles no longer necessarily needs to be filmed in California.
The script can be written in Hollywood, the stars can live in New York or Los Angeles, and the cameras can roll in Atlanta.
That economic reality has been particularly difficult for Florida.
Orange County’s $25 million initiative is therefore important, but it also illustrates the scale of the competition Orlando faces.
This is a beginning—not yet an answer.
What Orange County Is Offering
Under the new program, film and television productions seeking incentives generally must demonstrate at least $400,000 in qualified direct expenditures in Orange County and generate a minimum of 25 hotel room nights, among other requirements.
That structure reveals the economic strategy behind the program.
Orange County does not simply want a production to use Orlando as scenery.
It wants productions to spend money here.
That means hiring workers, renting equipment, booking hotels, purchasing services and doing business with local companies.
The incentive itself is funded through the Tourist Development Tax, linking film production directly to Orange County’s broader tourism economy.
The Film Industry Is Much Bigger Than Actors
This is one of the most misunderstood aspects of film incentives.
When people hear that a government wants to attract movies, they often imagine celebrities walking through downtown Orlando.
That makes for good publicity.
But it isn’t necessarily where the greatest economic value lies.
A major production can require camera operators, grips, electricians, sound technicians, set builders, makeup artists, costume designers, production assistants, drivers, caterers, accountants, editors and dozens of specialized vendors.
Those workers need hotels, restaurants, vehicles, office space, equipment and supplies.
A movie set effectively becomes a temporary business operation.
The challenge is transforming temporary activity into a permanent industry.
Keeping Florida Talent in Florida
That may ultimately be the most important test of Orange County’s experiment.
Central Florida already produces talented filmmakers, actors, technicians, editors, animators and digital creators.
The problem is continuity.
A cinematographer cannot build a sustainable career around one major production every few years.
Neither can a lighting technician, production designer or equipment-rental company.
When enough productions migrate elsewhere, workers eventually follow the jobs.
Then another problem emerges.
Studios become reluctant to shoot in a region because the local production workforce is too small.
That creates a damaging cycle:
Productions leave because the infrastructure is limited.
Infrastructure fails to expand because productions leave.
Talent relocates because there isn’t enough work.
And the shrinking workforce makes the region even less competitive.
Orange County’s incentive program has the potential to begin breaking that cycle—but only if it produces sustained activity.
The Person Tasked With Making It Work
Orange County has appointed Jen Pennypacker to administer the Film Incentive Program.
The choice is significant.
According to the county, Pennypacker spent 12 years as Business Development Director for the Metro Orlando Film & Television Commission, previously worked with Showtime Networks in Los Angeles, and has held leadership roles with Film Florida and Women in Film & Television Florida.
That experience matters because attracting productions involves much more than offering a rebate.
Film companies need locations.
They need permits.
They need crews.
They need equipment.
They need government agencies capable of responding quickly when production schedules change.
A competitive film office must therefore function almost like an economic-development agency specifically designed for entertainment.
Orlando Has an Unusual Advantage
There is another reason Central Florida deserves attention.
The future of filmmaking itself is changing.
Cinema increasingly intersects with artificial intelligence, virtual production, gaming, computer-generated imagery, immersive entertainment and real-time digital environments.
Orlando already has substantial expertise in several of those fields.
The region’s theme-park industry has created generations of professionals working in entertainment technology.
Central Florida’s simulation sector adds another layer of technical expertise.
Universities provide talent.
The tourism industry provides enormous hospitality capacity.
And Orlando International Airport provides global connectivity.
Taken together, those assets suggest that Central Florida’s opportunity may be larger than simply convincing Hollywood to shoot traditional movies here.
Orlando could compete for the next generation of entertainment production.
But $25 Million Must Produce Measurable Results
Public incentives require accountability.
The success of this program cannot be measured by the number of celebrities photographed in Orlando or by how many times the city appears on a movie screen.
Orange County should eventually be able to answer several straightforward questions.
How many productions came because of the incentive?
How much did those productions actually spend locally?
How many Orange County residents were hired?
What wages were paid?
How many hotel nights were generated?
How much business went to local vendors?
Did production companies return?
Did new film-related businesses open or expand because of the additional activity?
And perhaps most importantly:
How much economic activity remained after the cameras left?
Those numbers will determine whether the $25 million represents economic development or simply public subsidy.
The Debate Over Film Incentives Is Legitimate
Not everyone agrees that governments should subsidize film production.
Critics of such programs have long argued that states and municipalities can end up providing public benefits to large entertainment corporations while receiving less tax revenue in return than the incentives cost.
Supporters argue that a narrow tax calculation misses broader economic effects: employment, hotel stays, local purchasing, business development, tourism exposure and the creation of a permanent production workforce.
Orange County should welcome that debate.
A strong incentive program should be able to demonstrate its value through transparent data.
The objective shouldn’t be to attract movies at any price.
It should be to attract productions when doing so creates measurable benefits for the community.
Orlando Doesn’t Need to Become Hollywood
There is also a danger in framing this effort as an attempt to create another Hollywood.
Orlando does not need to become Los Angeles.
It needs to become Orlando.
Its competitive advantage lies precisely in what makes Central Florida different: tourism, technology, entertainment, multicultural communities, aerospace, simulation, education and a growing digital economy.
The opportunity is to connect those industries.
Imagine an entertainment economy where traditional filmmaking exists alongside virtual production, animation, gaming, immersive experiences and AI-assisted production.
That would not recreate the film industry Florida once had.
It could create something considerably more modern.
Florida Gets Another Shot at the Movies
For years, Florida’s film community has watched productions that could have been made here go somewhere else.
The consequences extended beyond losing a movie.
Jobs went with them.
Experience went with them.
Businesses went with them.
And eventually, some talent followed.
Orange County’s $25 million investment will not reverse that history overnight.
It certainly will not immediately match the scale of incentives available in established production centers such as Georgia.
But it represents something Florida’s film industry desperately needs:
a reason for producers to look at Central Florida again.
Now comes the difficult part.
Orange County must convert that attention into productions.
Those productions must become jobs.
Those jobs must create infrastructure.
And that infrastructure must attract the next production without government having to start from zero every time.
If that happens, the significance of the Film Incentive Program will extend far beyond its five-year lifespan.
Years from now, the most important question may not be whether Hollywood came back to Florida.
It may be whether Central Florida finally built a film industry strong enough that it no longer needed Hollywood’s permission to succeed.
……..
Read this article in our Spanish newspaper El Sol de la Florida:
https://elsoldelaflorida.com/florida-quiere-recuperar-su-lugar-en-el-cine-orange-county-apuesta-25-millones-para-atraer-grandes-producciones/
