What would "And Just Like That…," the short-lived "Sex and the City" spinoff, have been without the backdrop of New York City? Would Carrie have gallivanted down a Toronto street? Would Miranda have hailed a cab in suburban Atlanta?
We'll never have to find out, thanks to the over a billion dollars in subsidies that the state of New York handed out in 2025 to make sure that productions stayed in New York City, even if there was absolutely no other place the show could get made.
The second season of "And Just Like That..." wolfed down a healthy $25 million tax credit, but it was far from the hungriest of productions that received tax credits last year, according to the anticorruption group Reinvent Albany, which crunched data from the state's economic development agency. New York paid over $43 million for the final season of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," which was released by Amazon Studios, the company famously owned by one of the world's richest men. What did we get in return, besides a giant irritating fireworks display? The state argues that the subsidies help keep jobs in New York that might be heading elsewhere, employing the grips, electricians, and "below-the-line" film workers that live in New York and keep it a thriving destination for the creative industries. The subsidized movies and shows are also a form of soft power, maintaining New York City's prominence across the world, though the economic impact of that is difficult to measure.