AFM Opens With a Federal Pitch: 'Bring Tom Cruise Home'

By Daniel Okafor

Tom Cruise became the rhetorical centerpiece of the American Film Market's opening day, invoked by the MPA's Josh Rogin as the reason the U.S. needs a federal film tax incentive — and fast.

The 2026 edition of AFM launched with what passes in Hollywood for optimism, contingent, of course, on Congress approving the bill. The industry wants to reverse a slump in U.S.-shot productions, and it has settled on star salaries as the battleground.

"Star salaries is a key issue, because what we're looking to do is to bring back the biggest movies with the biggest amount of jobs attached to them," said Rogin, the MPA's SVP of federal government affairs (the Motion Picture Association, Hollywood's main lobbying body). "So when Tom Cruise does a movie in France, all those jobs become French jobs. All the taxes he pays, he pays it to the French government. Our current system is actually supporting runaway productions in this way. We need to bring Tom Cruise home to make movies here!"

Who took the case to Trump?

Rogin was speaking on the market's first panel alongside Stephen Paul, chair and CEO of SP Media Group, and the company's president, Scott Karol. Both met President Donald Trump at the White House earlier this year, together with Jon Voight, the president's self-styled "special ambassador" to Hollywood, to discuss the proposed incentive.

The Oval Office details stayed under wraps. But Paul described the letter Voight read aloud to Trump, one they had drafted together.

"It explained everything about the industry, explaining about how we've not only lost movies from around the world, but we're losing the effect of America on the rest of the world," Paul said. "Because when we don't make films here in America, people aren't seeing that around the world. We're faking it. We're saying, 'Oh, this is America,' but filming it in England or filming in New Zealand. People all around the world have wanted to come to America because of the films that they have seen and television that have filmed in America."

Paul also revisited his pitch to Trump about a developing film on Richard Nixon. "I said, Mr. President, I'm ashamed about what I'm about to tell you, but I'm about to make a film about a president of the United States that I'm going to film in England because I can't afford to film it here."

Paul asked Trump whether that was right. Trump said "No," according to Paul, and Karol then walked him through how the federal tax credit would help.

The lobbying appears to have landed. Trump later posted on Truth Social: "Congress should approve, immediately, a Federal Production Incentive to create Entertainment Jobs in America."

Why the end-of-year deadline?

The panelists framed passage as urgent. Karol said producers need the bill passed by year's end so they can set a Jan. 1, 2027 start-of-production date and qualify their films. He also flagged worries beyond the calendar, tied to the U.S. midterms.

"Because who the hell knows what's going to happen next year when Democrats come in and we hit the House and Senate and Trump's upset because he's a lame duck president — we don't want that," Karol said.

Rogin, addressing AFM's international crowd, put the economics in blunt terms.

"A federal incentive would change the entire nature of our domestic film and TV industry. Right now, we are about 39% of the market we produce in America for this audience. We used to be at 60% just a few years ago," he said. "Currently, America is in last place in federal incentives. We're dead last. We have none. So there are dozens and dozens of countries that have created competitive tax requirements that draw our production overseas. We don't need to take the best incentive, we just need to be competitive."

The U.S. share of production has fallen from 60% to 39% in a few years. The bill's fate before the midterms will decide whether Cruise's next shoot comes home.