(L-R): Jon Voight, Steven Paul, Donald Trump, Scott Karol

Source: Courtesy Steven Paul

(L-R): Jon Voight, Steven Paul, Donald Trump, Scott Karol

Steven Paul, veteran film producer and special advisor to Jon Voight as US ambassador to Hollywood, has said he doesn’t “think it would be good if there were tariffs on the entertainment business”.

Paul, who is CEO of SP Media Group, was speaking in a Fireside Chat session towards the end of the Industry Days at the inaugural Doha Film Festival.

This year US president Donald Trump has twice threatened to impose 100% tariffs on films made outside the US that come into the country; although detail on how such a plan would work in practice has not been forthcoming.

Paul is Voight’s manager, production partner and special advisor to his Hollywood ambassadorial role, to which Voight was appointed by Trump. Speaking in Doha, Paul laid out his view of how the tariffs controversy arose.

“We went around all of Hollywood: the idea was, there weren’t enough films being made in the US,” said Paul. “Productions have been going everywhere in the world, England, Australia, Bulgaria. There’s a series of reasons for that; one is it’s very expensive to film in the United States. The other thing is there are great tax incentives when you go overseas.

“We haven’t really been having that in the United States. We’ve been looking at how to make the American industry healthy again – or great again. We’ve come up with a plan, which we then submitted to the president. We met with every streamer, the studios, every union. We put together a coalition.

“We’ve come up with a laundry list, a wish-list: there was tax credits in America; there was co-production ideas; there is write-offs for individuals, infrastructure ideas. 

“We gave the whole list to the president. We’re sitting there in Mar-a-Lago. And one of the things that he liked, 20 pages in, was the word tariffs. That got a lot of news. It’s been crazy.

“We will see,” continued Paul. “It’s very difficult to tariff the entertainment business and I don’t think it would be good if there were tariffs on the entertainment business. Hopefully we won’t be going down that path, but we will introduce co-productions and tax credits and all of that.

“I don’t want us only building in the United States; I want there to be treaties so that we can do things – like I’m saying between Doha and America – that’s what I’m hoping.”

Devilina

Paul’s SP Media Group acquired California-based production facility Avenue Six Studios earlier this year, as part of its efforts to improve US production. Sean McNamara’s The Last Firefighter starring Voight and Kelsey Grammer recently wrapped at the Studios, produced by Paul.

As previously announced, SP Media Group acquired the Atlas Comics library in 2019 and Paul is leading a relaunch of the brand, with projects including a live-action version of Devilina written by Rebecca Webb. First published in 1975, the Devilina comic follows a young woman who travels to New York to explore her past, only to discover she is the sister of Satan and her twin brother has been manipulating her.

Speaking in Doha, Paul described the upcoming Devilina film as “a coming-of-age story – very unique, very interesting, very difficult”.

In the Q&A portion of the session, Paul was asked by an industry attendee about the “elephant in the room”, of what the questioner described as Voight’s islamophobia, and how Paul might get that message to Trump.

Paul said he was “sadly not going to get into politics” but that “Jon Voight loves the entertainment business, Donald Trump loves the entertainment business, and we are dedicated and thinking about ways to help the business”.

The producer then used a favourite Trump tactic by taking an unspecific dig at ”the media”. He said: “[The media] are dividing the United States, dividing the world, and demonising this one, demonising that one. We’re all human beings, we should all be working together. I’m a man of love and destiny, I want to see great things for everybody.”

Doha Film Festival runs until November 28.

Topics