With Netflix Coming to Fort Monmouth, Here Are 6 NJ Movies I’m Begging For
The booming New Jersey film industry doesn't seem like it has any sign of slowing down. Netflix's $1 billion studio at Fort Monmouth is on track for a 2028 completion, and Film New Jersey reports there are 69 productions currently filming in the state.
As much as I love the Jersey Shore and the entire Garden State serving as a backdrop on screen, I would love to see more stories that center New Jerseyans.
What I'm talking about are films that show real New Jersey, not the generic stereotypes that tend to populate Jersey-related narrative television and film. So what would constitute real New Jersey filmmaking? To me, it's an awareness of just how diverse the state is, socially, culturally and geographically. Yes, we have the Shore, but we also have a ton of farmland. We have packed cities like Hoboken, and we have the Pine Barrens.
What television and film got it right? Think the Kevin Smith canon or Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. The Sopranos certainly dabbled in Jersey stereotypes in a way that winked at the tropes, but the true Jerseyana of it all was in the family dynamics and the natural integration of the state as a backdrop. (There's a reason the Pine Barrens episode is the GOAT.)
I dropped a note on Threads related to this that picked up some steam, so here's a set of random ideas for Jersey stories that deserve the narrative film or limited series treatment.
Revolutionary War Saga: Joshua Huddy vs. Colonel Tye
Joshua Huddy is held up in Monmouth County as a hero of the American Revolution, even though he was kind of a scoundrel in his personal life. Titus Cornelius was a formerly enslaved person who camped out at an ad-hoc village beneath the Sandy Hook Lighthouse. He led Loyalist raiding parties from there, including on Huddy's property, and was revered by his men, who called him Colonel Tye.
After Tye's men captured Huddy, they were set upon by Patriots and Huddy escaped. Tye was shot during the melee -- likely by Huddy -- and died. Talk about a charged historical story ripe to be unpacked in a film.
There's even a recently released book by historian Rick Geffken titled New Jersey's Revolutionary Rivalry: The Untold Story of Colonel Tye & Captain Huddy. Some producer should get on the horn to Geffken and option that stat.
Footloose Meets Superbad in Ocean Grove
Hear me out... a group of Methodist kids staying in the Ocean Grove tent city decide to rebel against their parents. They cross the gates to the bridge over Wesley Lake to get to pre-gentrification Asbury Park to catch a concert they absolutely have to see. Obstacles! Love triangles! Miscommunication! Think of the possibilities, people!
Let's maybe not make them be on a quest to see Springsteen, though, okay? (I love Bruce but not everything Jersey Shore music scene-related needs to be about Bruce.)
Also, maybe give a nod to one of the clubs that were key to the '80s/'90s music scene but didn't ultimately have the longevity. The Stone Pony is epic. We all love The Stone Pony, but there are more stories to tell. Maybe make it punk rock. (R.I.P. Casino Skate Park shows.) We don't have to be so on-the-nose to get this movie made, do we? C'mon, do we?
American Pie But It's a Post-Prom Trip to Wildwood
I tip my hat to portrait photographer Holly Lund, who offered this on Threads: "Bring back teen movies and do one that was 2000s post-prom wildwood."
Oh, the stories us Jersey Millennials could tell... The post-prom trip to Wildwood was a rite of passage that may have involved somebody getting locked out overnight on the motel balcony in boxer shorts and slides while holding a fake ID and a case of Yuengling. Combine it with some of the late '90s/early '00s teen comedy energy, and you've got some nostalgia-bait on your hands.
Cuban Missile Crisis Drama Set at Sandy Hook's Fort Hancock
All the AI doomerism is in the back of our minds, but we don't necessarily want it in the front of our screens while we're dissociating.
How about a Cold War-era film that mines the tension wrought by existential dread but where we know it's all going to work out in the end? And how about we put it on a beach?
Fort Hancock at the Jersey Shore secretly stored Nike missiles with nuclear warheads. Can you imagine how the soldiers there were feeling during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Are You Afraid of the Dark? But It's Weird New Jersey Stories
Are You Afraid of the Dark? was a horror anthology series on Nickelodeon that featured self-contained episodes. The stories often jumped off from urban legends and folklore, and the horror was pretty light. (Our parents wouldn't let us watch Tales from the Crypt, so this was as good as it got.)
Weird New Jersey's repository of the state's most bizarre true tales and urban legends deserves the episodic treatment.
Literally Any Decent Narrative Film or Limited Series Around Hurricane Sandy
There are great documentaries and nonfiction books about Hurricane Sandy's impact on the Jersey Shore, but narrative storytelling around a storm that impacted all 9 million of us and ravaged the state is 🦗 🦗 🦗 ...
I think about all the great art that emerged as New Orleanians dealt with the horror of Hurricane Katrina. While the scope of devastation from Sandy in New Jersey pales in comparison to Katrina's, the impact was enormous and reverberated for years.
There is one film set against the backdrop of Sandy called A Rising Tide. The setup of the romantic drama is that a young chef returns home to help save his family's Atlantic City restaurant... and somehow the Princess Bay cottage in Union Beach, 90 miles away, is on the movie poster.
I haven't seen the movie, though the reviews are respectable and it features an impressive cast including Hunter Parrish and Tim Daly. Maybe the online summaries of the plot are wrong and large swaths of it do take place in the Bayshore rather than co-opting it for disaster-porn shots. (And somebody please email me if I got this massively wrong: jackie.corley AT townsquaremedia.com.)
All the same, I'd like to see a more nuanced and thoughtful depiction of the storm and richer stories related to it.
Speaking of Jersey Shore icons that have appeared in television and film, learn more about the history of the Evil Clown of Middletown:
History of the Evil Clown of Middletown
Gallery Credit: Jackie Corley
