President Donald Trump announced plans to impose massive tariffs on the film industry on Sunday night, which could spell bad news for comic book movie adaptations in particular. Trump shared the new idea on his paid social media platform, Truth Social, saying that his administration is beginning work on a 100% tariff on all movies produced outside of the U.S. in order to incentivize studios to do more of their work here at home. These days, many movies are filmed all over the world, and while domestic shooting has been dropping, the latest dip is due mostly to the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles in January of this year. If these tariffs are passed, it could cause some huge issues for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DCU at critical points for both franchises.
Trump espoused conspiracy theories to support his call for tariffs on Hollywood, claiming that other countries are intentionally drawing movie productions away from the U.S. to harm our economy and to lace “propaganda” into the movies themselves. There is no evidence that this is true, and plenty of evidence that studios are simply seeking the best prices they can get, while filmmakers are seeking specific locations to match the stories they’re trying to portray. Moreover, these productions typically bring American workers with them to foreign locations, which means the yare not losing any American jobs in the process.
Regardless, Trump’s proposed tariffs would be devastating for U.S. movie studios, as all of them film around the world to some extent. Investors clearly saw the danger right away, as major U.S.-based entertainment companies saw their stock prices plummet on Monday morning, including Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, and Disney.
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For superhero fans, the hits to WBD and Disney are the most concerning, as they are the parent companies of DC Studios and Marvel Studios, respectively. This year, Marvel is shooting Avengers: Doomsday and Spider-Man: Brand New Day in the U.K., while DC has plans to shoot Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow there as well.
As with many of Trump’s other proposed tariffs, the exact process here is unclear, so we can only speculate on what this would really mean for the film industry. However, many who work in Hollywood are assuming that distributors would be responsible for paying these tariffs, which would put them out of business, and/or force them to pass on higher prices to studios. Studios would then not be able to afford to make as many movies, which would reduce the number of American jobs available on film sets.
There are some legal cases attempting to curb Trump’s tariffs at various levels, so it’s unclear if or when these increased fees could go into effect. Considering the 90-day pause of Trump’s import tariffs, many movie fans are not expecting this to go into effect. For now, the slate remains unchanged for the MCU and the DCU.
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