Arkansas filmmakers lobbying for improved state incentives for their industry drew encouragement from an economic impact study last month.
Bentonville Studios owner Zak Heald and Russellville film producer Lesa Crowell hope the study’s findings will lead to new legislation shoring up incentives and lifting a $4 million cap.
“For me, [the study] shows how important it is to continue to fund film incentives,” Crowell told Arkansas Business. “We’re still a long way off from other states surrounding us, and certainly the film incentives here remain a concern for a lot of projects that want to shoot in our unique and beautiful state.”
Olsberg SPI of London conducted the study under a contract with the Arkansas Legislative Council’s Executive Subcommittee worth up to $97,000.
It concluded that current state incentives for TV and film production need improvements in structure and administration. It also said that the film industry provided a $54.3 million economic impact over a dozen fiscal years, and labor income of nearly $28.4 million.
Olsberg SPI cited data that Arkansas’ Digital Motion Picture Incentive generated more than $3.62 in economic activity for every public dollar spent.
The state offers two incentives for TV and filmmakers, a tax credit and a rebate for money spent in Arkansas. They both offer a 25% base incentive for Arkansas goods, services and nonresident labor, plus an extra 10% for the labor of full-time residents. An extra 5% applies if the Arkansas employees live in economically depressed areas.
The state deployed $1.12 million in film incentives in fiscal 2025, $1.5 million in fiscal 2024, and just over $1 million in 2023. Those figures were down from $11.6 million in fiscal 2021, when incentives from several big productions from previous years, including the third season of HBO’s “True Detective,” went onto the books.
By contrast, neighboring Oklahoma spent more than $43 million on film rebates in 2024, and about $17 million each in 2023 and 2022.
The Olsberg SPI study suggested doing away with the rebate program, which the state applied case by case with discretionary funding from the governor’s office. It also recommended a “notable increase in the tax credit system’s annual cap.”
Heald, a crusader for better Arkansas incentives, applauded the report.
“I think all of the data just reaffirms and supports everything we’ve been saying,” Heald wrote in an email. “But now it’s not coming from us; it’s coming from a state-funded study.”
Opponents of the incentive programs say they don’t actually produce the economic benefits cited to justify them and insist that the majority of the benefits go to out-of-state entities.
Olsberg said Arkansas’ incentives have supported an average of 110 full-time jobs in filmmaking per year. By raising the cap, Heald and Crowell argue, the state could multiply that number many times over.
The report also suggested expanding the Arkansas Film Commission staff, which now has just one worker, and perhaps moving it from the purview of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission.
State Sen. Clarke Tucker, D-Little Rock, a supporter of greater incentives, expects little progress until the Legislature convenes again in January 2027. “But I am hopeful that this study — once we have all pieces of it — will help build legislative support for a more robust film incentive in Arkansas, in terms of both financial commitment and structural support for the state film office,” he said.
“Regardless, in the meantime we are working to secure some temporary funding for the industry until we know more about what the long term may look like,” Tucker said.
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