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Disney’s Marvel Abandons Georgia, Taking Livelihoods With It
Tax incentives lured studios to help build the ‘Hollywood of the South.’ Now they’re going overseas for cheaper labor costs
By
Ben Fritz
Aug. 17, 2025 - 5:30 am EDT
Janine Gosselin started her entertainment industry career in Los Angeles, but it really took off when she moved to Georgia. Now that’s where it’s dying.
Throughout the 2010s and early 2020s, the 62-year-old script supervisor had more work than she could handle and earned as much as $200,000 annually. She sat alongside the directors of huge
Marvel Studios productions like “Spider-Man: Homecoming” and “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” ensuring every detail stayed consistent between takes.
Marvel is one of many Hollywood companies that have shot in Georgia to take advantage of the state’s generous production tax credits. It made nearly two dozen superhero movies and TV shows in the Atlanta area.
But beginning with this summer’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” Marvel is making most of its upcoming content in the United Kingdom. Rising costs in Georgia mean it’s now cheaper to shoot in the U.K., according to a person familiar with the matter.
Marvel’s departure is part of a nearly 50% drop in production spending in Georgia over the past three years. The precipitous decline has raised questions about whether state subsidies built a “Hollywood of the South,” or sparked a gold rush that’s ending faster than it began.
“You feel like a jilted lover,” said Gosselin, who hasn’t had steady work since February of last year and borrowed from her retirement plan to pay bills. She has been studying to become an intimacy coordinator—the person who manages sex scenes on set—in hopes it will give her more job opportunities in entertainment.
Cheap labor in the U.K.
Some 245 projects were shot in Georgia in the fiscal year that ended in June, compared with 412 in fiscal 2022. The state’s plight isn’t unique. Studios have been producing significantly fewer TV shows since 2023 in an effort to make their streaming services more profitable. The content they do produce is often filmed overseas to save money.
Across the U.S., 29% fewer movies and TV series with budgets above $40 million started filming in 2024 versus 2022, according to data company ProdPro. In the U.K., that number grew by 16%. Its tax credit is similar to Georgia’s, but workers there are generally paid less, and studios don’t have to cover their health insurance.
Marvel is making two new “Avengers” movies and the next “Spider-Man” at a facility outside London where parent company Disney has a long-term lease. It’s far from the only Hollywood company filming in the U.K. “Barbie” and “Wicked” were shot there, too.
Studios also frequently produce films in Canada and Australia. They typically fly out lead actors, directors and department heads but hire the crew locally.
California, New York, New Jersey and Texas are among the
states fighting back by expanding their film and television tax credits. The result has been a global merry-go-round of production activity as studios search for the best deal.
‘Unemployed in Georgia’
In Georgia, the mood among movie and TV workers is grim. While filming the game show “25 Words or Less” in Atlanta earlier this year, staffers sang alternative lyrics they devised for the
“Made in Georgia” jingle that plays at the end of shows shot there: “Unemployed in Georgia.”
Lee Thomas, director of the Georgia Film Office, said labor costs are the biggest factor that has driven studios out of the state. “We hope that this is an anomaly where they’ll try out other markets and will return to Georgia because they have faith in our crew and facilities and our tried-and-true incentive,” she said.
A few years ago, Atlanta was such a hotbed of production that it seemed possible it would supplant Los Angeles as the heart of the entertainment industry.
John Grubb made so much money working as a grip on six different Marvel projects that he calls the $350,000 Atlanta-area home where he lives with his girlfriend “the house ‘Avengers’ bought.”
Georgia’s entertainment boom began after it expanded its production tax credit in 2008 to a maximum of 30%, one of the most generous in the world. Unlike other states, it didn’t put a cap on the program, so producers could be sure they’d get back nearly a third of the money they spent.
Lionsgate’s Hunger Games and Universal’s Fast & Furious film franchises shot in Georgia, as did Netflix’s series “Stranger Things” and AMC’s “The Walking Dead.” Marvel was the most important studio, according to local crew workers, because the 22 movies and shows it produced in the state had big budgets and employed many hundreds of people.
Experienced entertainment workers moved to Atlanta for work. Natives who never dreamed of heading to Hollywood found themselves on sets next to Dwayne Johnson and Jennifer Lawrence. The entertainment industry supported nearly 20,000 jobs in the state, according to a 2023 study by researchers at Georgia State University.
The Marvel family
Grubb is a Georgia native who never thought he would find film work in his home state. The 44-year-old loved handling lights and other equipment for Marvel because its shoots were unusually long and frequently paid overtime. Crew workers who became part of the Marvel family segued from one superhero production to the next.
“Marvel allowed me to do so much with my life and really set the trajectory for my career,” Grubb said.
Marvel did most of its interior shooting at a 1,000-acre, 34-stage facility near Atlanta called Trilith Studios. It was frequently full. “We were fighting over stages on a daily basis because there just wasn’t enough room for Marvel and whatever other show was trying to film,” said Lenzi Sealy, who scouted locations for four Marvel projects.
Now Trilith, which has a village with apartments and restaurants for visiting workers, is largely empty.
Trilith Chief Executive Frank Patterson said he believes the current downturn is a cyclical one that will end. To keep the facility busy until then, his company has invested in startups making content exclusively at Trilith.
“It’s going to settle into some kind of new normal in 2027,” he predicted. “Meanwhile, back at the farm we will have been creating other opportunities.”
Sealy remembers the moment during production of February’s “Captain America: Brave New World” when word spread among anxious crew members that it might be Marvel’s last movie in Georgia. Then the studio held an auction to sell props it had accumulated during its decade in the state.
“That’s when it really hit home,” she said.
Write to Ben Fritz at
ben.fritz@wsj.com
