By: Cosmo F. Terrigno, Ed.S.
Hollywood has long had a talent for making one place look like another. In South Jersey, Cape May has become Newport, Rhode Island, while rural communities have stood in for places hundreds of miles away. But South Jersey has also appeared unmistakably as itself, with Atlantic City providing filmmakers a setting that requires little disguise. Restaurants, roads, hotels and familiar landscapes across the region have appeared on screen, sometimes without audiences ever knowing they were looking at New Jersey.
Now, the state wants people to know exactly where they are looking.
Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed legislation in early September establishing the New Jersey Film Trail, an initiative that will identify locations throughout the state where notable movies, television shows and other productions were filmed. Under the new law, the Division of Travel and Tourism, working in consultation with the state’s film commission, will select locations for the trail and develop an interactive website with photographs, directions and vacation itineraries identifying nearby restaurants, lodging, attractions and entertainment.
According to the New Jersey Legislature, the legislation was sponsored in the Assembly by William Moen and Margie Donlon and in the Senate by John Burzichelli and James Beach, with Sens. Patrick Diegnan and Gordon Johnson joining as co-sponsors. Three of the primary sponsors have South Jersey constituencies: Moen’s district includes communities in Camden and Gloucester counties, Burzichelli’s includes communities in Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem counties, and Beach’s includes communities in Burlington and Camden counties. Together, their districts reach five of South Jersey’s eight counties.
For South Jersey, the idea arrives at an interesting moment. The region is not simply part of New Jersey’s film history. It is increasingly part of its present, raising a larger economic question: whether the arrival of productions can generate opportunities for South Jersey businesses, workers and communities that extend beyond the days when cameras, crews and stars are actually here.
Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day offers one of the most recent examples.
The science-fiction film, starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor and Colin Firth, filmed in 10 New Jersey municipalities across six counties, including Buena Vista in Atlantic County and Upper Township and Woodbine in Cape May County. According to the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, the production spent an estimated $34 million in qualified film production expenses during 23 days of filming in New Jersey and hired more than 1,800 crew members.
Those figures represent activity statewide, not $34 million spent in South Jersey alone. Still, the production demonstrates something significant for the region: when one of the world’s most recognizable filmmakers went searching for locations for a major studio production, South Jersey was part of the answer.
It was hardly the first time.
In 2024, director James Mangold transformed parts of Cape May into Newport, Rhode Island, for A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet. Cape May’s preserved architecture and seaside character helped recreate the setting surrounding the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, one of the defining events depicted in the film.
The transformation also required something less glamorous but economically important: places for hundreds of people to sleep, eat and work.
According to New Jersey Monthly, Cape Resorts provided hotel rooms for 470 cast and crew members during the Cape May production. The New Jersey Economic Development Authority reported that A Complete Unknown filmed for more than 60 days in New Jersey and hired more than 4,700 crew members for the production.
The hundreds of cast and crew members housed locally illustrate how the arrival of a production can reach beyond a movie set. Film crews need hotel rooms, meals, transportation, equipment, construction, security and other goods and services. A movie may be an artistic endeavor, but making one is also a temporary business operation capable of bringing considerable activity with it.
New Jersey’s relationship with filmmaking reaches back to the beginnings of the American motion-picture industry, from Thomas Edison’s West Orange laboratory to the early production center that developed in Fort Lee. South Jersey eventually developed a cinematic history of its own.
One of its most fascinating examples is Bob Rafelson’s 1972 film The King of Marvin Gardens, starring Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn and Scatman Crothers. Shot on location in Atlantic City, the film captured the city several years before New Jersey voters approved a constitutional amendment authorizing casino gambling there in 1976.
In The King of Marvin Gardens, South Jersey did not merely stand in for somewhere else. Atlantic City played itself, leaving behind a cinematic record of a version of the city that would change dramatically in the years that followed.
Other productions continued that relationship. According to the New Jersey Department of State, principal photography for M. Night Shyamalan’s 2023 thriller Knock at the Cabin took place in Burlington County, with much of the movie filmed in Tabernacle and additional filming at the Evergreen Dairy Bar in Southampton. Earlier productions brought cameras to the region as well, including Eddie and the Cruisers and Brian De Palma’s Snake Eyes.
New Jersey has deliberately encouraged film production through its Film and Digital Media Tax Credit Program. According to the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, qualifying film projects can receive tax credits based on qualified production expenses, with enhanced incentives available for certain qualifying expenses.
The South Jersey Film Office Cooperative is already attempting to capitalize on the opportunity. The cooperative brings together Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties with Visit South Jersey and promotes the region’s assets to the film and television industry. It also assists productions with finding locations and navigating local permit and fee processes. Representatives of other South Jersey counties are invited to join the cooperative.
The region offers filmmakers something difficult to manufacture on a soundstage: variety within a relatively compact area. There are beaches and boardwalks, farmland and forests, Victorian architecture and aging industrial landscapes, small towns and urban neighborhoods. Atlantic City can look like nowhere else, while another South Jersey community can convincingly become somewhere else entirely.
There is also an effort to develop the people who work behind the camera. Earlier this year, the South Jersey Film Office highlighted FRAME, a free 18-week training program shared by AY Development and the NJ Film Collective for adults in Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties. The program is designed to provide hands-on experience in film-production roles and professional Adobe certification.
The Film Trail could extend that economic relationship beyond production itself through film tourism.
Because the trail is designed to connect filming locations with nearby restaurants, lodging, attractions and entertainment, its potential economic value extends beyond the locations themselves. A visitor may come to see where a favorite movie was filmed, but the local payoff occurs if that visit also leads to a hotel stay, a restaurant meal, shopping or time spent at other attractions.
That could be particularly relevant in South Jersey, where tourism is already an important part of the regional economy.
A visitor interested in seeing where A Complete Unknown recreated Newport would not arrive in Cape May to find only a filming location. The visitor would arrive in an established resort community filled with hotels, restaurants, shops, beaches and historic architecture. Similarly, Atlantic City’s film history exists within an extensive hospitality and entertainment industry. In both cases, a screen connection can provide another reason to visit, while the surrounding businesses and attractions provide reasons to stay and spend.
The lawmakers behind the legislation have also emphasized that potential economic connection. Sen. John Burzichelli said the Film Trail could support local tourism and small businesses, while Assemblyman William Moen said the initiative could bring additional foot traffic to nearby restaurants, shops and attractions.
The economic possibilities, however, should not be confused with guaranteed economic results.
A plaque does not create a tourism economy. A recognizable movie location does not automatically fill hotel rooms. And statewide film-production spending cannot be assumed to have remained in the particular communities where cameras happened to be rolling.
Which South Jersey locations ultimately become part of the Film Trail, how aggressively they are promoted and whether visitors actually spend money in surrounding communities will determine whether the initiative produces measurable local benefits.
There is nevertheless an intriguing symmetry to what New Jersey is attempting.
The state is providing financial incentives to encourage filmmakers to come here. South Jersey organizations are promoting the region to those productions and developing a workforce that can participate in them. Now, through the Film Trail, New Jersey is proposing to invite audiences back to the places filmmakers chose after the filmmakers themselves have gone home.
For South Jersey, that could mean the economic life of a movie does not necessarily end when someone calls “cut.”
Film has always been an exercise in preservation. Long after sets disappear and actors move to another production, what the camera captured remains. That is particularly apparent when watching an older film shot on location. Buildings disappear. Streets change. Businesses close. Yet, for a couple of hours, film can make them exist again.
South Jersey already has a place in that cinematic record, from the Atlantic City preserved in The King of Marvin Gardens to Cape May masquerading as Newport in A Complete Unknown and the rural landscapes chosen by Spielberg for Disclosure Day.
The New Jersey Film Trail now presents a different possibility: taking what audiences have seen on screen and bringing some of that attention back to the communities where those images were created.
Hollywood has already discovered parts of South Jersey.
The economic question now is whether South Jersey can give moviegoers a reason to discover them, too.
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