New York's Film and TV Shoots Are Filling Up Again
Spending on film and TV productions in New York rose 87% in the third quarter of 2026, to $1.61 billion, according to data platform ProdPro. The third quarter runs from July to September. That follows a 54% jump in the second quarter.
Production spend is the money that goes into making shows and films: crews, sets, equipment, locations and studio space. When it rises, more people get hired and more stages get booked.
Deadline reported that Rafael Espinal, who was seated as New York City Film Commissioner by Mayor Zohran Mamdani in February, saw the first green shoots of recovery late last year. He said he and his team were surprised by how strong the recovery turned out to be this summer.
The city's Mayor's Office of Media & Entertainment tracks permits and projects each month. Its permit data, which leaves out work done on sound stages, shows an average increase of 21% from January to September 2026 compared with the same period in 2025.
New York ranked second overall for production spend, behind California. ProdPro put California at $1.76 billion for the quarter, up 17%. New York City accounts for about 80% of production across New York State, according to ProdPro. Nationally, total US production spending also rose in the third quarter, after falling year on year in all four quarters of 2025. New York has posted four straight quarters of year-on-year growth, starting in the fourth quarter of 2025.
The clearest sign is in the studios. Doug Steiner, chairman of Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, said, "We are bursting at the seams again, which hadn't been the case for two, three years." The studio has about 30 sound stages. Its productions began filming in July and August, and it is now booked through next summer. On a typical day, 1,500 to 2,000 people are on site.
Wildflower Studios in Astoria, Queens, opened in the fall of 2024. Its managing partner, Adam Gordon, said, "We're completely full." Co-founder Raphael De Niro said the studio started to fill in the spring and now has a waitlist of productions. Its first feature, Universal's Focker-in-Law, is due in cinemas on November 25.
Some of the pull comes from state incentives. Under the New York State Film Tax Credit Program, productions have to shoot on a certified soundstage at a qualified facility. Other programmes offer credits on qualifying spending, including a 30% credit for Upstate work and 20% for Downstate work under the Commercial Tax Credit Program.
The scale of the sector was already large before this year's rebound. A 2021 economic impact study commissioned by the city found that New York's TV and film industry supports 185,000 jobs, $18.1 billion in wages and $81.6 billion in total economic output.
For the people involved, the numbers come down to bookings. A studio booked into next summer means crews have work lined up for months. Whether the growth holds through the next year and beyond is the question the next set of quarterly figures will start to answer.
