CANNES: Donald Trump’s dream to save Hollywood with tariffs is not winning him fans among the dealmakers at the Cannes film festival — even among those who voted for him.
Unlike Robert De Niro — a vocal critic who called Trump “America’s philistine president” at the festival’s opening ceremony — they told AFP they have no political or personal axes to grind with him.
But they see his idea of 100-per cent tariffs on movies produced “in foreign lands” as a “massive potential disaster” for an industry already shaken by streaming platforms.
“I don’t see any benefit to what he is trying to do. If anything it could really hurt us,” Scott Jones, the head of Artist View Entertainment, told AFP.
“A lot of people are out of work right now, and this is not going to make it better. There needs to be method to the madness,” said the producer, in Cannes with a Tennessee-shot Civil War epic The Legend of Van Dorn.
Trump’s own “special ambassadors” to the industry, actors Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone, both signed a letter Tuesday thanking him for drawing attention to “runaway” US productions being shot overseas, but asking for tax breaks to keep them in the United States rather than tariffs.
A wide coalition of Hollywood producers, writers and directors groups also put their names to the call.
“More than 80 countries offer production tax incentives and as a result, numerous productions that could have been shot in America have instead located elsewhere,” they said.
The biggest American film at Cannes is Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning — which was mostly shot in Britain and South Africa.