BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In Western New York, two small movies will begin shooting before the end of the year and Buffalo Niagara Film Commissioner Tim Clark said there are a number of big projects in the works for 2025.

"Two of them in particular are studio films so chances are they'll be major motion pictures with major stars," Clark said.

This would have been unusual news roughly a decade ago but Clark said as the state has expanded its annual film tax credit spending, most recently to $700 million last year, Buffalo has seen the benefits. Several months ago, he visited Los Angeles to meet with executives from Disney.

"They're all very excited and interested in Buffalo. It used to be I'd go out to these studios and it was tough to get a meeting. Now they're calling me and asking me to come out there," Clark said.

He isn't the only one trying to get Disney to expand the conglomerate's footprint in New York. Gov. Kathy Hochul in a Thursday interview said she met with CEO Bob Iger this week about bringing in more production and making the tax credit "even better" to remain competitive. Fiscally-conservative think tank Empire Center's research director Ken Girardin said that would be a mistake.

"For the state to be saying, while we want to try to get Disney to come in and do more here, that just means the state is going to lose more money on this program," he said.

At the beginning of the year, the state Department of Taxation and Finance released a report estimating the tax breaks given from 2018 to 2022 drew 15 cents in direct tax revenue and about 30 cents total for every dollar spent. That's in direct contradiction, to a previous report suggesting the state gets $1.70 back on every dollar.

The biggest difference in the studies is assumptions about whether the jobs and projects would exist without the credit.

"The bulk of the film industry would remain in New York. It might dry up in some small areas and people in Buffalo tend to get pretty emotional about that," Girardin said.

Girardin and Clark agree that the Western New York film industry would not be the same without the subsidies. They disagree on whether on not it should matter.

"A lot of this is political obviously and some of it is emotional but it's miscast because they say it's going into the pockets of movie stars and so forth," Clark said. "It isn't. It's going into the pockets of people that are working behind the scenes."