Orange County Throwing Millions at Disney To Get Its Business Back

When Disney’s Hollywood Studios opened in 1989 as Disney/MGM Studios, the original intent was to create a working movie studio that would take guests inside the mystical process of making TV shows and movies. And for years, Hollywood Studios pumped out movies and Disney Channel shows.

Despite its intent, Disney quickly realized two important facts about its park: it didn’t need live film sets to fill the park, and filming in Florida was too expensive.

By 2004, Disney had shut down most of its filming in the state, moving back to California and north to Georgia, two states that offered generous tax rebates to film there. By 2016, Florida had eliminated its program that provided tax rebates to companies filmed in the state.

In the meantime, Disney spent billions filming its Marvel films in Georgia, which offered a 20 percent rebate. Disney filmed Ant-Man (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Spiderman: Homecoming (2019) in the state.

Since the pandemic, Disney has moved much of its film production to the United Kingdom, where they receive generous tax incentives. But now, Florida is trying to lure Disney back to the United States.

Last year, the Orange County Commissioners approved $5 million to attract filmmakers to the area, but none of that money has been spent. Now, Oscar-nominated producer S. Leigh Savidge is in Central Florida to attempt to get the commission to expand its program and hopefully bring more film productions to the state.

Savidge said:

This is a fact-finding mission to see if there is political and economic will here locally to bring production here and to set movies here in the Florida Orlando area. 

The Orange County Commission is currently using money from the Tourist Development Tax Fund to lure productions back to the area, but that doesn’t seem like it will be enough to bring large-scale Hollywood films back to Central Florida.

Disney received $41 million in tax incentives for filming the live-action Snow White (2025) in the United Kingdom.

It’s a start for Orange County to get Disney back to the state, but without state backing, it’s going to be challenging to compete with what Disney is getting elsewhere.