Push for a Federal Film Tax Break Opens AFM With a Tom Cruise Pitch

A proposed federal tax break for film production took centre stage on the opening day of the 2026 American Film Market, and it came with a famous name attached. "We need to bring Tom Cruise home to make movies here!" said Josh Rogin, senior vice president of federal government affairs at the Motion Picture Association, the film industry's main trade group, according to Variety.

The AFM is a deal market where distributors and sales agents buy and sell films, often before they are finished. A federal incentive is a government tax break meant to pull filming, and the jobs that come with it, into a country. Rogin's argument was simple. When Cruise makes a movie in France, the jobs become French jobs, and the taxes he pays go to the French government.

Rogin spoke on the first panel alongside Stephen Paul, chair and chief executive of SP Media Group, and Scott Karol, the company's president. Rogin said the United States now produces about 39% of the market, down from 60% a few years ago. He also described America as "dead last" on federal incentives.

Paul and Karol met President Donald Trump at the White House earlier this year, along with Jon Voight, who has been described as a "special ambassador" to Hollywood. Paul told the president he was developing a film about Richard Nixon, and that he planned to shoot it in England because he could not afford to film it in the United States.

The president has since backed the idea in public. In a post on Truth Social, he wrote that "Congress should approve, immediately, a Federal Production Incentive to create Entertainment Jobs in America."

The timing was a major theme on the panel. Speakers pointed to an end-of-year deadline for Congress to pass the bill. Karol said producers need a start-of-production date of January 1, 2027, which is the day filming must begin, for their films to qualify.

For producers planning next year's slate, that date is the one to watch. A film that starts shooting after it passes would fall outside the window, so the calendar for American productions would depend on how quickly Congress moves. The panel did not settle what the final bill will contain, and the proposal still needs to clear the legislature before it becomes law.