State Film Boom Continues With Big Spending But Will Hollywood Strike Slow The Party?

The Governor's office released numbers Tuesday showing the state's heavily subsidized film industry continues to boom with $794 million spent on media productions here in the year ended June 30. The total for the past three fiscal years is put at a whopping $2.2. billion. But is the party about to end or at least suffer a painful interruption?

The writers and actors strike has ground to a halt film and TV production and the longer it goes the more the record production spend in New Mexico will recede, generating less economic activity and causing big headaches for the businesses and workers associated with the industry. 

We asked one of our Senior Alligators (aka a senior source) with a long association in film and media to lay out the scenario unfolding here in the wake of the strike: 

Joe, for those who may not realize that New Mexico is a film state and Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Las Cruces are film cities hold on to your hats. With the entire industry shut down this will go down fast. The last major strike in 2008 was estimated to cost Los Angeles county $30 million a day. We’re not LA but we’re not far off. A lot of crew, vendors and local businesses will feel a lot of pain, but this just isn’t about money. The existential threat of generative artificial intelligence and how it’s dealt with is the major stumbling block. The studios including our own Netflix and NBCU seem determined to starve the writers and actors out. When your fighting for control over your own words or images that’s a pretty high threshold of pain. Meanwhile thousands of unionized New Mexico film workers are standing down in support both in union solidarity and because they are up to bargain next year. It’s already bad. Prepare for much worse to come.

Businesses already taking a direct hit are those that supply the industry with costumes and the like. Also, a restaurant like Grandma's K & I Diner on Broadway, the closest one to the Netflix Studios at Mesa del Sol, has to be bracing for a long impact. 

The last session of the Legislature increased the annual incentives to Hollywood and company from $110 million a year to an eventual $160 million. As the strike wears on and the pain is felt, policymakers may be more assertive in auditing that money. Is it creating the number of jobs and stimulating local business as much as promised by those enjoying the incentives which are now among the most expensive in the nation? 

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(c)NM POLITICS WITH JOE MONAHAN 2023