Nevada film tax bill would bring jobs, but questions remain as lawmakers examine details
Nevada film tax bill would bring jobs, but questions remain as lawmakers examine details ·KLAS articles
Greg Haas
5 min read
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Lawmakers dug into details of the film tax credit bill on Thursday, with film studio executives from Warner Bros. Discovery and Sony answering questions in Carson City.
And while high-paying jobs attached to a Las Vegas movie studio could help diversify the economy, there were some hard questions for the studios. Lawmakers asked whether the bill does enough to guarantee that Nevada workers would get those jobs.
Assembly Bill 238 (AB238) would grant tax credits worth $120 million per year for 15 years.
The payoff would be 19,000 construction jobs to build the studios and 17,680 permanent jobs with an average salary of $113,000.
“It sounds exciting,” Republican Assem. PK O’Neill said. But with the appearance that the studios are just shopping for the best deal from several states, how does Nevada know the studios won’t just come back asking for more, he asked.
“The three of us at this table are putting our money into building the infrastructure,” David O’Reilly, CEO of the Howard Hughes Corp., answered. “If we don’t stay over the 15-year period — if they don’t stay over the 15-year period filming — that money is essentially thrown out the window.”
David O’Reilly, CEO of the Howard Hughes Corp. (Courtesy: Nevada State Legislature)
“To be blunt, and I’m often accused of being direct and blunt, I’m not here to build a studio. Howard Hughes is not making any profitability in building a studio. Our profitability is in the 17,000 jobs that are created of folks that will be buying homes, sending their kids to school, shopping in Downtown Summerlin, enjoying everything that Nevada has to offer. That’s the benefit.”
Several lawmakers wanted answers about the guarantees that Nevadans would be working at the studios and the companies wouldn’t just bring in workers from California or somewhere else.
Simon Robinson, chief operating officer of Warner Bros. Discovery, repeatedly told the Assembly Committee on Revenue that it’s in the studio’s best interest to hire locals, and they were committed to investing in the training necessary to grow the workforce here. Warner Bros. joined the partnership in an agreement announced Tuesday.
Paying travel expenses for California workers isn’t practical, Robinson said. And he acknowledged to Democratic Assem. Venicia Considine that Nevada isn’t the only place where they can get tax breaks.
“We utilize, Warner Bros., these incentive programs all around the world. On our annual spend of $20 billion on content, we process about $1 billion worth of tax incentives in a variety of jurisdictions. But there’s nowhere outside of California or the UK where we thought, we believed that both the structure of the incentive and the location are sufficient for us to make a home, open a studio of our own and build a sustainable ecosystem,” Robinson said.
Simon Robinson, chief operating officer of Warner Bros. Discovery. (Courtesy: Nevada State Legislature)
The bill hearing concluded with testimony in support and opposition, which continued well past 7 p.m.
As expected, unions spoke in favor of the bill, calling it an investment in the future. Education advocates who protested the decision two years ago that set aside some public funds for a stadium for the Las Vegas A’s turned out to speak against AB238, saying money is better spent on education.
Lawmakers looked for flaws in the agreement as they tried to nail down assurances that it would be a good deal for the state. Republican Assem. Gregory Hafen II asked if companies would be bound by family leave protections for employees. While the bill says nothing about FMLA, federal law would apply.
AB238 requires the studios to commit $400 million in capital investment, a $6 million contribution to the Clark County Redevelopment Agency and completion of a vocational training studio that will cost at least $8 million. Studio executives said they are committing $1.8 billion to build Summerlin Studios on 31 acres near Town Center Drive and Flamingo Road.
The film tax bill is expected to take advantage of the studio and locations throughout the state, according to Matt Walker of the Hughes Corp.
“As productions need to be on Mars, or need to be in a wonderful wooded area like Lake Tahoe, those productions are going to happen,” he said.
Of the $120 million in tax credits per year, $95 million will be for primary productions by Sony and Warner Bros. The remaining $25 million is available for independent productions, a unique structure for film production incentives.
Considine asked if the studio would shut down or just lease out studio time when they had exhausted the tax credits.
“It’s not our expectation that there will be unused stage time,” Robinson said. “The way the model is built and the way we’ve done our production planning is to fully satisfy the requirement. If there’s a period in between productions where a stage is empty we would lease that to a third party. But I find that highly unlikely.”
Michael Morgenthal, senior vice president for Sony Pictures, talked about his connection to the state.
“In 1995, I was living in Nevada, working in production accounting on a film called ‘Casino.’ Thirty years later, I’m excited to be back in Nevada working with our partners on this important effort to modernize the state’s production incentive and to set the foundation for the construction of a state-of-the-art studio facility,” Morgenthal said.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
