New Jersey’s film renaissance keeps getting more interesting.
You’ve already heard about Netflix setting up its East Coast flagship at Fort Monmouth. You might know about the $900 million 1888 Studios rising under the Bayonne Bridge and the Lionsgate facility slowly taking shape in Newark. Jerseywood is happening — that much is clear.
But the latest player to enter the game isn’t building a traditional Hollywood-style sound stage. He’s doing something entirely different, and he’s doing it inside a 126-year-old silk mill in Paterson.
Meet Alan Mruvka – Bronx-born, raised in Englewood Cliffs, trained architect, real estate developer, and the co-founder of what became E! Entertainment Television. The man helped build one of the most recognizable pop culture networks on the planet.
Now he’s betting $250 million on the way you watch stories on your phone.
From Silk City to Screen City
The building at the center of all this is the historic Reinhardt Mills property on State Street in Paterson — listed on both the New Jersey and National Register of Historic Places since 2003, and one of the most striking examples of the red-brick industrial architecture that earned Paterson its “Silk City” nickname back when it was one of America’s great manufacturing powerhouses. Filmology Labs will be developed inside the historic Reinhardt Building at 61 State Street, a landmark property that once served as a major silk mill during Paterson’s rise as the renowned “Silk City.”
Mruvka had been eyeing the building for years before he even had a plan for it — just an architect’s eye and an appreciation for what it was. The universe apparently agreed, because a real estate broker cold-called him about the property right around the time he was developing Verza TV, his new app built around vertical micro-dramas. The building and the idea found each other.
What’s a Micro-Drama, Exactly?
Think of it like a binge-worthy drama series — but engineered for your phone screen and your attention span. Verza TV specializes in “micro-dramas” – scripted series delivered in 60- to 90-second vertical episodes. They’re fully produced, story-driven shows designed to be watched the way you already hold your phone. No flipping it sideways. No squinting at subtitles. Just story, vertical, immediate.
21 Sound Stages, All Ready to Roll
What makes Filmology Labs genuinely different from everything else being built in New Jersey right now is how it’s designed. Most of the other studio projects — Lionsgate, Netflix, 1888 — are what Mruvka calls “big box sound stages”: giant empty warehouses where productions move in, build everything from scratch, and move out.
Filmology Labs flips that model entirely. The campus will feature 21 production sound stages with pre-built, fully lit, permanent standing sets — hospitals, courtrooms, luxury penthouses — designed to allow filming to begin immediately, eliminating weeks of set construction and lighting design.
The facility also includes AI studios, podcast facilities, a green-screen stage, and an LED volume wall — the same technology used on The Mandalorian.
The whole 250,000-square-foot complex is designed by architect Conrad Roncati of Architectura, who had the challenge of fitting a next-generation production facility inside a century-old historic structure. From the sounds of it, he pulled it off.
Paterson Is More Than Just a Backdrop
One thing worth noting: Mruvka isn’t treating Paterson as just a convenient cheap location. Mayor André Sayegh welcomed the project, saying it will “create jobs, spark innovation, and help position our city at the forefront of the evolving media and entertainment economy.”
And Mruvka himself has talked about actively engaging local schools to train young people for careers in the industry. For a city with as much history and as much potential as Paterson, that’s a meaningful commitment.
Already Ahead of the Pack
Here’s the kicker: while the other big NJ studio projects are still under construction or stuck in delays, Filmology Labs is already built. The building exists. Mruvka hopes to be producing micro-dramas at a rate of two per month starting as early as June 2026.
Compare that timeline to the rest of the field. Netflix’s first phase of soundstages at Fort Monmouth isn’t expected to open until 2027, with the full facility targeting 2028. The Lionsgate/Great Point project — originally announced in 2022 with a projected 2024 completion — is now targeting spring 2027. And 1888 Studios broke ground in December without committing to any timeline at all.
Filmology Labs could quite literally be the first major new production facility in New Jersey to actually turn on the lights, roll camera, and start making content.
Jerseywood Just Got More Interesting
New Jersey’s film story has always had range. There’s the prestige play — Netflix’s billion-dollar campus, the Lionsgate deal, the 1888 mega-project positioning itself as the largest film and TV facility in the Northeast. And now there’s this: a scrappy, smart, future-forward bet on an emerging format, built inside a landmark that survived being a silk mill and a storage warehouse to become something nobody saw coming.
The state’s combination of generous film tax incentives, proximity to New York City talent, and a deep well of urban architecture and locations has been pulling productions here for decades. The Sopranos made Jersey iconic. A Complete Unknown used Garden State streets as a stand-in for New York City. And now, with studios opening on every corner of the state, New Jersey isn’t just a filming location anymore — it’s becoming an industry.
Alan Mruvka looked at a 126-year-old red brick building in Paterson and saw the future of entertainment. Hard to argue with him.
