Jake Bujnowski
A projector displaying the state of Wisconsin, with money instead of film.
Nick Langholff has traveled the world as an assistant film director. When he came home to Wisconsin in 2006, he continued to make movies, including Madison and Feed the Fish. But over the last dozen years, he has transitioned to commercial production and says he is “grateful” to have brought to life advertisements starring Aaron Rodgers and Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Still, other stories linger in the back of Langholff’s mind. He has three completed screenplays set around the city of Mineral Point and says “I’ve been close many times to getting them going.” But each one will take multiple years to complete and Langholff says he’s waiting until “the time is right” to commit.
Finding the right partner is one important step. The prospect of state funding is another — “Tax incentives kind of make those things possible,” he says.
Gov. Tony Evers has included $10 million in tax credits for in-state production by film companies in his 2025-2027 budget, as well as $400,000 for an “Office of Film and Creative Industries.” Five Republican state legislators are circulating a separate, roughly similar bill. Wisconsin hasn’t had a film office, which assists production companies working in the state, since 2005. There were filmmaking incentives when Jim Doyle served as governor from 2003-2011, but Scott Walker, his successor, eliminated them.
Filmmaker Nathan Deming calls the incentive proposals a “huge victory.” He grew up in Tomah, Wisconsin, and “wanted to make films here my whole life.” But after finishing film school he came back to his home state and found “nothing.”
“There was no reason to stay here,” he laments.
January and February — in his home state. While promoting the latter film he became connected with Action! Wisconsin, a nonprofit coalition of leading filmmakers, producers, actors and backstage crew advocating to incentivize production in the state.
Former Miramax executive Jeffrey Kurz is a steering member of Action! Wisconsin and one of the most vocal advocates for the incentive plan. A Racine native who moved back to Milwaukee from the West Coast in the 1990s, Kurz is a “big believer” in making movies in Wisconsin and thinks of the state as a “filmmaker-friendly” place to work.
He says these incentives would pay dividends for the state. “If a production comes to a community, it’s not just about making that movie. Everyone’s benefiting.” This includes restaurants, hotels, Uber drivers and caterers. Add to that designers and technicians that make shoots possible.
“I see the talent that is here,” says Kurz. “What that talent needs is opportunity and experience.”
Even the addition of a film office could help filmmakers connect with what’s available for making movies in Wisconsin, says filmmaker Xia Magnus, who grew up in Madison and now lives in Los Angeles. He came home in 2015 to shoot a short film, Round River, and says it would have been “amazing” to have a film office at that time.
“To have all this centralized knowledge of who’s doing what,” he says. “That’s a huge resource.”
Wisconsin is one of only three states without a film office and one of 13 without production incentives, which Kurz calls “crazy” and Langholff “ridiculous.” Neighboring states Minnesota and Illinois are among the states that have both, and advocates say they are successful models to emulate.
Action! Wisconsin claims Illinois “generated a record-breaking level of nearly $700 million in film expenditure in 2022.” “It’s been a huge boon for [Duluth],” Kurz adds. “Meanwhile, in Superior, nothing. Like right there, some invisible line.”
In a statement, Evers says the incentives are “a good investment that works out for Wisconsin, helps our economic development, gets more people interested in coming here, and it’s an investment worth making.”
But it’s not a given that the incentives will be a boon for Wisconsin’s economy. Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office found a net return on investment of 13 cents for every dollar in credits and Virginia Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission reported its program had a “negligible” impact on the region’s economy, according to a 2022 report compiled by the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.
The proposed Wisconsin program aligns with the tenets of successful incentives in the report, including capping the total number of credits and targeting them towards in-state workers.
Officials from Evers’ office say they are “hopeful” any differences between his budget proposal and the Republican bill will be worked out this year so the tax credits can roll out in 2026.
Deming says Action! Wisconsin’s current goal is to make support for the plan “bulletproof, so that if they take it out, enough people would be upset about it.”
He suggests that anyone who feels strongly about the plan should contact their legislators.
“There’s a rich history of film here,” Deming says. “Hopefully we can change Wisconsin’s low filming rates pretty fast.”
[Editor's note: This story has been corrected to attribute the quote about making the plan "bulletproof," to Nathan Deming, not Jeffrey Kurz.]
