Stein Calls for Change to NC Film Grant Funding Structure at Wilmington Studio Roundtable

The Roundtable Was Built to Win an Argument About Accounting

Gov. Josh Stein didn't hold his Sept. 15 press event at a podium in Raleigh. He held it inside a working soundstage in Wilmington, standing next to union crew and studio operators^[1][2]. That choice was the message: North Carolina's film program isn't a line item, it's a workforce, and Stein wanted to be seen defending it in the room where the work happens.

The ask itself sounds technical. Stein wants the North Carolina Film and Entertainment Grant funded on a "multi-year cash-flow basis" instead of a strict annual cap^[5]. But the reason it matters is simple: the program has stopped approving new grants^[5][6]. Money already promised is still going out. Nothing new is coming in until at least 2029, unless lawmakers change the rules^[5][6].

Here's the number both sides keep repeating, and it means something different depending on who says it. In 2024, more than 55 productions filmed in North Carolina, spending over $302 million in the state^[5][6]. To the film industry and Stein's office, that's the return on the incentive. To the program's critics, it's beside the point, because it counts money spent, not money the state got back.

A Rebate, Not a Blank Check — and Why That Distinction Is the Whole Fight

To understand either side, you need to know how the grant actually works. It isn't cash handed to a studio up front. A production spends its own money first, gets audited, and only then collects a rebate of up to 25% of what it spent inside North Carolina^[9].

That mechanic is the industry's strongest argument. Unlike many business subsidies, the state never pays for a project that doesn't show up — the money only moves after the spending is verified^[9]. Studios and crew unions say that structure, paired with a hard annual dollar cap, doesn't work for an industry that plans years ahead. A studio deciding in 2026 where to shoot a 2028 series can't wait to find out if North Carolina's yearly bucket still has room^[5].

That's the case for Stein's "cash-flow basis" fix. Since 2019, the state has treated other business incentives this way: commit to a project now, pay the bill whenever the money actually goes out the door^[5]. Budget language put film grants under a hard yearly cap instead. Stein argues that mismatch, not overspending, is what broke the program.

The Other Story: An Agency That Wrote Checks It Couldn't Cover

Sen. Michael Lee, a Republican who represents Wilmington, tells a very different story about how the money ran out. He says the state film office committed roughly $100 million in grants over 24 months — and that about $91 million of that wasn't actually sitting in the account^[4][6]. He calls that mismanagement, not bad luck^[4][6].

That framing matters because of who controls the money. The legislature appropriates the funds; an agency that commits future years' budgets without a vote has, in effect, taken over that power^[5][4]. Lee's argument is that the annual cap Stein wants to loosen is exactly the control that should have stopped this from happening in the first place.

What makes Lee's position more than a talking point is that he's not against the program. He has sponsored bills to expand the incentive for small, low-budget films, even while criticizing how the office ran the bigger one^[3][4]. He also backed a $15 million add-on to this year's budget, which he described as a technical correction rather than a bailout^[4][6]. Lee's district has real film jobs in it, inside a Republican caucus that's often skeptical of targeted subsidies. That split isn't a contradiction — it's the position of someone caught between both pressures.

The 2026 state budget already raised the stakes either way. It set the film program's recurring funding at $31 million a year plus that one-time $15 million, and raised the per-project caps — from $7 million to $20 million for a feature film, and from $15 million to $25 million per season for a TV series^[4][6]. Bigger caps mean bigger commitments, which is part of why the program now has more than $106 million in obligations still coming due over the next several years^[6].

Why Georgia Sets the Terms No Matter Who's Right

Underneath the accounting dispute sits a fact neither side disputes: production is mobile, and crews aren't. A studio can move a shoot to another state in a matter of months. A camera operator who owns a house in Wilmington can't follow that fast^[6][7].

That asymmetry is why the freeze already has a body count. Netflix's series "The Hunting Wives" is moving its production — specifically its third season — from North Carolina to Georgia, with a producer tying the move directly to the funding uncertainty^[7]. Georgia's film credit has no cap, which means it can promise producers certainty North Carolina currently can't^[8][7]. North Carolina isn't really choosing between having an incentive and not having one. It's choosing between its incentive and Georgia's.

The Older Argument the Roundtable Never Settled

There's a deeper question sitting behind all of this: do film incentives actually pay for themselves? Independent state audits say mostly no. A December 2023 evaluation by Georgia's Department of Audits and Accounts found that state got back only about 19 cents in tax revenue for every dollar of film tax credit it issued — a loss of roughly 81 cents on the dollar^[8][10]. Florida and Massachusetts audits have found similar losses, in the 86-to-93-cent range^[8][10].

Those studies measure only one thing: what comes back to the state treasury. They don't count the wages a boom operator or a caterer earns, because that money isn't a treasury return — it just isn't the thing the audit is designed to measure^[8]. That's the industry's rebuttal: the $302 million in 2024 in-state spending went to real people and real businesses, whether or not the state's books balanced afterward^[5][6].

Neither number is wrong. They're just measuring different things, and each side quotes the one that makes its case. Subsidy-accountability researchers want you to hear "ten cents back on the dollar" and stop there. The industry wants you to hear "$302 million" and stop there.

Coverage Split Along the Same Lines Readers Would Expect

Local Wilmington outlets, the ones closest to the jobs at stake, mostly framed the freeze as a problem in search of a fix rather than a policy worth debating on its merits. Port City Daily's coverage was the most complete, carrying both Stein's cash-flow argument and Lee's mismanagement claim side by side^[6]. WECT's headline led with Stein's diagnosis — that the cap is the real problem — and gave less space to the mismanagement counterargument^[5]. WWAY's framing, that funding is "drying up" and putting productions "at risk," borrowed the industry's own language without mentioning the overcommitment dispute at all^[7].

Carolina Journal, published by the free-market John Locke Foundation, called the program a "taxpayer subsidy" and never used the state's own term, "grant" or "rebate" — a framing that also skips over the fact that the money only pays out after audited in-state spending^[3]. Good Jobs First, a left-leaning group that opposes corporate incentives generally, cited real state audits but collapsed several states into one number and reported only the treasury side of the ledger, not the wage-earner's^[8].

For now, the freeze holds. The film office isn't taking new applications, Lee and Stein haven't reconciled their two accounts of how the money disappeared, and the next production deciding where to shoot has Georgia's uncapped credit sitting right next door^[8][7].