An artistic rendering of Netflix studio in Fort Monmouth.
Talk about beating swords into ploughshares—now they’re being beaten into production studios. On Wednesday, New Jersey’s governor Phil Murphy announced that Netflix would be turning the former Fort Monmouth army base into a state-of-the-art production facility. Netflix will be investing nearly $900 million in the repurposing, which will take several years to complete.
Gov. Murphy called Netflix’s move a “transformative investment [that] will serve as a cornerstone in our efforts to create a thriving industry from whole cloth,” adding that the project would generate “an entirely new ecosystem” consisting of housing, hotels and ancillary businesses and services in addition to the production facility itself. The project is expected to create 3,500 jobs during the construction phase, with another 1,400-2,000 jobs anticipated when the facility goes into operation.
In announcing the project, the governor tweeted: “Our administration always knew NJ was a star—that’s why we worked so hard to build our entertainment industry from the ground up. Now, we are thrilled the former Fort Monmouth campus will officially be home to Netflix’s East Coast production facility!
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Echoing Gov. Murphy’s remarks, Netflix’s Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said: “We believe a Netflix studio can boost the local and state economy with thousands of new jobs and billions in economic output.”
The growth of streaming services has been a boon to the metropolitan area in recent years, and New Jersey has been aggressively trying to attract such projects to the state. Fort Monmouth is located in northeastern New Jersey about 30 miles from New York City. Netflix already has a production facility located in the Bushwick section of the borough of Brooklyn.
For the Fort Monmouth project, Netflix will be spending $55 million for the 289-acre plot of land and another $850 million to build the new facility. When completed, it will be one of the largest fully integrated production facilities in the world, rivaling Netflix’s 300-acre hub in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In addition to its Bushwick facility, Netflix is leasing stages in Atlanta and California as well as in Toronto, Vancouver, London, Tokyo, Seoul, and Madrid.
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