A new ad featuring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson is asking Texas legislators to create incentives for productions to shoot in their home state. The video, which pulls no punches against Hollywood, dropped as thousands have rallied behind Stay in LA. The latter campaign seeks to uncap tax incentives for productions in Hollywood following the devastating fires. Plus, what’s going on with the shakeup at CNN? Kim Masters and Matt Belloni dive in.
Hurray for Hollywood? In an attempt to keep film and television production in Los Angeles following the recent wildfires, a movement called Stay in LA is seeking help from the California state legislature to temporarily lift tax incentive caps. “People would like to shoot here, but it is prohibitively expensive. And the program in the state is capped, so those credits fill up extremely fast,” Belloni explains. “They have to do a lottery for the films that do it. It gives an advantage to the bigger studios that have people whose jobs are to take advantage of those tax credits. If you took the cap off, you would allow more productions to take advantage of the credit. And this seems pretty reasonable, because there's a limit on it. It's a three year limit.”
Not “alright, alright, alright?” An inflammatory ad featuring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson is asking Texas legislators to create incentives for productions to shoot in their home state… but the timing couldn’t be any less sensitive to those affected by fires in Los Angeles. “This is ‘stealing away an industry from the boogeyman in California, that we want to show Texas is better than California.’” Says Belloni.” “Maybe not the right time to be doing that in such a pointed way, especially with these stars that have made their careers off of Hollywood productions.”
An offer you can refuse? In an attempt to make CNN more accessible to conservative viewers, CEO Mark Thompson has made Jim Acosta’s decision to leave the network an easy one by offering the 10am anchor a late night slot. “This has nothing to do with ratings, but what it does have to do with is this initiative which CNN is clearly pursuing to make itself more MAGA friendly,” Masters notes. “Scott Jennings, who people on the left absolutely hate, has been getting more air time, it seems. And meanwhile, Jim Acosta, on his way out, said: ‘It's never a good time to bow down to a tyrant. I have always believed it's the job of the press to hold power to account.’”