SOCKO! SCOOP — ADAM DRIVER SHOOTS AT EVIL CLOWN
The most chaotic call sheet in New Jersey right now: Adam Driver, a Netflix limited series, and the legendary Evil Clown of Circus Liquors on Route 35 in Middletown.
The show is Rabbit, Rabbit, a thriller from Peter Craig (The Batman, Top Gun: Maverick) directed by Philip Barantini — the Adolescence guy. Driver plays J-Will, an escaped convict cornered at a truck stop who takes hostages and ends up in a psychological poker match with an FBI Crisis Negotiator played by Regina Hall. Will Poulter, Odessa Young, and Clarence Maclin round out the cast.
The story is “set” at a truck stop in southern Illinois. The actual truck stop? Built from scratch in the empty Circus Liquors parking lot on Route 35 in Middletown. A fake gas station, going up next to one of the most recognizable roadside signs in the state. The evil clown is staying in the shot.
Then look at the company Rabbit, Rabbit is keeping. From Netflix’s own announcement, the Jersey lineup right now:
→ Happy Gilmore 2
→ The Rip
→ A House of Dynamite
→ The Beast in Me
→ Office Romance
→ The Whisper Man
→ Little Brother
→ Here Comes the Flood
→ 72 Hours
→ Rabbit, Rabbit
Ten Netflix titles. One state. Listed by name in their press materials. This isn’t a hot streak. This is the new map.
Drive Route 35 next month. Wave to Adam.
#SockoMagazine #movie #FilmedInNJ #RabbitRabbit #AdamDriver
SOCKO! SCOOP — EDISON’S AMERICA
NBC New York just dropped a feature on Thomas Edison’s legacy, timed to America’s 250th — and it puts Jersey’s own at the dead center of the story of how this country got built.
Charles Watson reports the piece. The footage tells the story: Edison didn’t just invent the light bulb. He invented the modern movie. He invented the recording industry. He invented the way ideas get turned into industries. Menlo Park. West Orange. Edison, NJ, the town that took his name because his fingerprints are everywhere.
The phonograph. The motion picture camera. The first commercial film studio, the Black Maria, in West Orange. The first electrical power grid that actually worked. Over 1,000 patents. Six factories. A whole new American economy, built in Essex County.
When SOCKO! talks about Jersey as the cradle of the American film industry, this is what we mean. Hollywood likes to pretend it was always Hollywood. It wasn’t. The movies were born here. The studios were born here. The recordings, the bulbs, the wires that lit the rooms where the movies played — born here.
America turns 250 in 2026. The country didn’t start in Philadelphia and end in Los Angeles. It got built in the middle. And the middle is Jersey.
Watch the NBC New York piece. Then drive to West Orange and walk the grounds where the modern world got switched on.
#SockoMagazine #SockoScoop #ThomasEdison #America250 #MadeInNJ
SOCKO! SCOOP — JERSEY’S REVOLUTION ON SCREEN
A cannon fires. The audience jumps. Jersey’s place at the center of the American Revolution comes back to life.
Road to Liberty: Through Their Eyes, a new one-hour documentary commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, just had its NJ premiere at the Morris Museum in Morris Township. Premieres on NJ PBS late May into early June. Goes national on July 1, 2026 for a three-year run on public television stations across the country.
Written, directed, and produced by Jill A. Hargrave of EagleVision Productions, the film zeroes in on the New York-New Jersey campaign of 1775-1777, the most vulnerable years of the Revolution, when the war could have ended before it really started. Told through soldiers’ letters, diaries, memoirs, and re-enactments.
The figures Hargrave rescues from the footnotes:
→ Col. John Glover and the Marblehead men of the 14th Continental Regiment
→ Joseph Plumb Martin, the young soldier whose memoir threads the whole film
→ Margaret Cochran Corbin, who fired a cannon at Fort Washington after her husband fell beside her
The point hits home in Morristown. Jersey saw 670 battles during the Revolution, more than any other state. Washington wintered here. The British army moved here. The war moved here. And most people glossed it over in school.
This is exactly what SOCKO! has been arguing all along. The Jersey film industry isn’t just about Netflix shooting Sandler comedies in Bayonne. It’s about Jersey storytellers telling Jersey stories. Road to Liberty is the work of a Jersey producer at a Jersey nonprofit, broadcast on the Jersey public TV station, screened at a Jersey museum, about the Jersey campaign that saved the Revolution.
Educational shorts and a teacher’s guide drop free at the end of June at eaglevisionproductions.org.
Set the DVR. Then go to Jockey Hollow.
#SockoMagazine #SockoScoop #RoadToLiberty #NJPBS #America250
SOCKO! SCOOP — BOOZE AT THE MOVIES
Trenton just took a swing at saving the multiplex.
Assembly Bill A4666, passed out of committee May 14, would let NJ for-profit movie theaters serve alcohol. Beer. Wine. Cocktails. Two hours before showtime and during every first-run film.
The terms:
→ $210K initial license fee
→ Drops to $150K if 10% of the booze comes from NJ breweries, wineries, cideries, or distilleries
→ 21+ to serve
→ No population caps — towns can’t limit how many theaters get licensed
The pitch from Calabrese and Rowan is simple. Streaming gutted the box office. The pandemic gutted what was left. iPic just filed Chapter 11. Theaters need a reason to be more than a screen.
Survey said Jersey misses Blockbuster most. Netflix is building at Fort Monmouth. Paramount at 1888. Lionsgate in Newark. We make the movies here. Now we need to save the rooms where we watch them.
A glass of red at Power Ballad. A bourbon at the Bon Jovi biopic. Save the theater. Save the night.
#SockoMagazine #SockoScoop #SaveTheMovies #NJFilm #BillA4666
SOCKO! SCOOP — 1888 STUDIOS JUST WON DEAL OF THE YEAR
The biggest deal in New Jersey commercial real estate this year isn’t an office tower, a luxury condo, or a warehouse.
It’s a movie studio.
NAIOP New Jersey just named 1888 Studios the 2026 Emerging Markets Deal of the Year. Bayonne’s waterfront took the top honor.
The numbers:
→ 74 acres of former Texaco refinery, dormant for years
→ 1.5 million sq ft of purpose-built production campus
→ 23 smart stages, ceilings up to 60 feet
→ 22-acre water backlot
→ Northeast’s largest production campus
Anchor tenant: Paramount (Skydance). 10-year lease. 285,000 square feet.
A brownfield that poisoned the waterfront for a generation just got transformed into the biggest film studio in the Northeast — and the state’s real estate industry declared it the deal of the year.
Netflix at Fort Monmouth. Lionsgate in Newark. Now Paramount in Bayonne. Three majors. Three Jersey towns. Three buildouts at once. The 35% tax credit holds through 2049.
Bayonne wasn’t supposed to be Hollywood. Bayonne is Hollywood now.
#SockoMagazine #film #1888Studios #Bayonne #newjersey
SOCKO! SCOOP — JUNE 5: JLO DROPS HER JERSEY FILM
Mark the calendar. June 5. Jennifer Lopez and Brett Goldstein hit Netflix in Office Romance, a rom-com directed by Ol Parker (Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again), and the whole movie was shot here.
JLo plays Jackie, President and CEO of Air Cruz, the kind of executive who runs a tight ship and an even tighter anti-fraternization policy. Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent himself, Ted Lasso), plays the new sexy lawyer who walks in and tests every line she’s drawn.
The Jersey footprint:
→ Denville — Hunan Taste on Bloomingdale Avenue, closed for a day so JLo could shoot
→ Hoboken
→ Montclair
→ Kenilworth
→ Upper Saddle River
Five towns standing in for some imaginary glass-tower corporate America. Five towns where the call sheets went out, the trailers parked, the locals got hired, the diners stayed busy.
This is the buildout in real time. JLo today. Tomorrow it’s someone else. The week after it’s two more productions. Jersey isn’t waiting for permission to be the backdrop anymore: Jersey is the backdrop.
Stream June 5. Watch the office scenes carefully. You might recognize the parking lot.
#jlo #jenniferlopez #newjersey #netflix #sockomagazine
SOCKO! SCOOP — CAMERON DIAZ FILM SEEKS JERSEY PLAYERS
Casting call just dropped. If you play soccer, you’re between 18 and 30, and you live in Jersey City, Hoboken, Newark, or anywhere in the five boroughs, Netflix wants you on a Cameron Diaz movie.
The film is Bad Day, a new action-comedy from Netflix. Grant Wilfley Casting is hiring real soccer players for background scenes shooting in NJ and NYC. $234 a day SAG. $181.50 non-union. Bring your own cleats. Bring your own jersey. Show up. Play. Get paid.
This is what an actual film economy looks like.
It’s not just the names above the title. It’s the casting agencies dialing Jersey numbers. It’s the eighteen-year-old in Newark getting his first IMDb credit. It’s the kid from Hoboken who plays in a Sunday league walking onto a Netflix set because he happened to be good with his feet.
Studios bring stars. Studios also bring day rates, paychecks, and a foot in the door for people who never thought film was a thing they could touch.
Apply now. Show up. Get on Netflix.
#newjersey #camerondíaz #movie #BadDay #film
SOCKO! SCOOP — SARANDON + MACY IN JERSEY
The shoot’s happening right now in Little Falls.
Susan Sarandon and William H. Macy are filming Exit Right, a new indie directed by documentary filmmaker Thomas A. Morgan in his narrative debut. Marcia Cross is in it too. Sarandon and Macy are also executive producing.
The premise hits hard. Sarandon plays Jan Randall, a retired journalist with inoperable brain cancer who refuses to spend her final days in a hospital bed. So her husband John (Macy) gives her the trip of a lifetime: a journey around the world, on foot, in their own hometown. Marcia Cross plays Jan’s estranged sister, set against the husband’s plan.
Sarandon is from Jersey. Macy is from Massachusetts but lived in Jersey for years. Both have been here before. Sarandon shot Stepmom in Montclair and Maplewood. Macy shot Maybe I Do in Montclair and Cranford in 2022. They keep coming back.
The location matters here. The whole movie hinges on the idea that a hometown can hold the whole world if you look at it right. So they picked Little Falls. The pizza places, the diners, the Passaic River, the streets that look like every street any of us grew up on. A trip around the world, filmed in Jersey, because Jersey can be anything you need it to be.
Indie drama. Two Oscar winners. The Passaic River. Worth following.
#SockoMagazine #SockoScoop #FilmedInNJ #LittleFalls #SusanSarandon
SOCKO! SCOOP — BRING BACK BLOCKBUSTER!
Friday night. 1995. The whole family piles into the car for the ten-minute drive to the strip mall. The doors open. The blue and yellow cathedral. The wall of new releases. The argument over what to rent that takes longer than the movie itself. The popcorn at the counter. The “Be Kind, Rewind” sticker. The ritual.
A new MarketBeat survey of 3,014 New Jersey adults 45+ just asked what dead brand they want back most. The answer wasn’t a department store. Wasn’t a record shop. Wasn’t a mall.
Blockbuster. Number one. Beat everything.
The chain Netflix killed is the same chain Jersey now misses most — while Netflix spends a billion dollars building a studio at Fort Monmouth. Twenty years later, Jersey’s still pining for what Netflix won.
Because Blockbuster was never about the movie. It was about the trip. The picking. The arguing. The five people walking out laughing about what they grabbed. The whole point was the going. The whole point was the together.
We don’t get Blockbuster back. But we hear the ache underneath the survey. Make the new studios destinations. Make the screenings events. Give people a reason to leave the house again.
Jersey’s not done with the movies. Jersey’s just done watching them alone.
#SockoMagazine #SockoScoop #Blockbuster #NewJersey #movie
There is Oil in the Ground
Socko! Inaugural Issue, May 26
Personal message from Publisher & Co-Founder @xadamnelson
“For ninety-four years, the most important conversations in American military communications happened on a piece of land in Monmouth County, and almost nobody outside the Signal Corps noticed.
Fort Monmouth invented radar there.
Fort Monmouth bounced a signal off the moon there. Fort Monmouth trained twenty-one thousand officers there during the Second World War and sent them into the mouths of Europe and the Pacific. And then in 2011 the gates closed, the flag came down, and Monmouth County lost five thousand jobs in a single afternoon. Fourteen years of silence followed.
I drove down there last month. I stood at the fence. I wrote my second feature for the inaugural issue of SOCKO! Magazine because what is happening on that ground right now is not a real estate story and it is not a Netflix story. It is the second act of an American place, and the second act is going to be louder than the first if we have the nerve to build it right.
This is the piece in the issue I will be defending for a long time. Not because it is controversial. Because it is true.
Read “There Is Oil in the Ground” — my second feature in the inaugural issue of SOCKO! Magazine, the one dedicated to film in the state of New Jersey, which I publish alongside the magical @angelamatusik , our Editor in Chief.”
Read the story, visit sockomagazine.com
#Netflix #fortmonmouth #nj #newjersey #film
SOCKO! SCOOP — MIAMI WHO?
Netflix’s new R-rated Kevin Hart comedy 72 Hours drops globally on July 24, 2026. The setup: Joe, a 40-year-old husband and father, gets accidentally added to a bachelor party group text and ends up crashing the weekend in Miami.
Except Miami didn’t shoot Miami.
Director Tim Story rolled the cameras up the Turnpike. The “South Beach” you’ll see on screen? Long Branch. The urban chaos and residential blocks? Hoboken and Jersey City’s Van Vorst neighborhood. Three Jersey towns wearing a fake tan and a Florida shirt for an entire feature.
Cast on the call sheet: Kevin Hart, Marcello Hernández, Mason Gooding, Teyana Taylor, Andy Garcia, Ben Marshall, Kam Patterson, Zach Cherry.
This is the move now. Studios stop pretending the shoot has to happen where the story is set. The 35% tax credit, the crews, the locations, the proximity to New York — Jersey doubles for everything and saves everyone money doing it. Miami today. Atlanta next. Whatever the script calls for, Jersey can be it.
Watch the beach scenes carefully. You might recognize the boardwalk.
#SockoMagazine #Newjersey #film #72Hours #KevinHart
SOCKO! SCOOP — JERSEY KIDS COME HOME
Paul Rudd was born in Passaic and raised in Palisades Park. Nick Jonas grew up in Wyckoff. Two Jersey kids who made good, one a Marvel superhero, one a Jonas Brother, are coming home together on a Friday night in Holmdel.
The occasion: the New Jersey premiere of Power Ballad, the new feature from John Carney (Once, Sing Street), starring Rudd and Jonas as two musicians at war over a song. Rick (Rudd), a past-his-prime wedding singer, meets fading boy-band star Danny (Jonas) at a gig. They bond over a late-night jam session. Danny turns one of Rick’s songs into the comeback hit that revives his career, and Rick sets out to reclaim what’s his, even if it costs him everything he loves. With Havana Rose Liu, Jack Reynor, and Peter McDonald, who co-wrote the script with Carney. Lionsgate. Rated R. Wide release the following Friday, June 5.
A Carney movie about music, self-respect, and the price of ambition, premiering on a Jersey screen with two of Jersey’s own on the marquee.
The screening kicks off the 2026 Monmouth Film Festival, May 29–31 at Bell Works in Holmdel. Three days of films, panels, and industry meetups inside one of the most beautiful adaptive-reuse spaces in the state.
Full schedule, passes, tickets: monmouthfilm.org
#SockoMagazine #MonmouthFilmFestival #PowerBallad #PaulRudd #NickJonas
