Bayonne High School could be headed back in front of the cameras. Superintendent John Niesz says the school may serve as a filming location for an upcoming Paramount Studios movie that could come to Bayonne in February or March, though almost everything else about the production remains a mystery.
According to TAPinto Bayonne, movie details remain largely undisclosed, and Niesz says district officials expect to speak with the film's producer shortly to sort out logistics. There's no title, no cast list, and no confirmed shooting schedule yet — just the prospect that Bayonne's hallways could once again double as a movie set.
It wouldn't be the first time. Back in the summer of 2022, GHB Productions filmed the TV mini-series Girl Haunts Boy at Bayonne High School and the former St. Andrew's School gym, according to the City of Bayonne. That shoot ran from June 23 through July 22, 2022, with operational hours stretching from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, excluding weekends, all on property owned by the Bayonne Board of Education.
A School With a Longer Hollywood Résumé
Bayonne High School has turned up on screen before. The school building appears in The Substitute, which starred Tom Berenger, and in Grosse Pointe Blank, which included scenes filmed inside and outside the school and starred John Cusack, per the seed reporting from TAPinto Bayonne. Those credits sit alongside a broader list of Bayonne-shot projects cited in the same report, including Find Me Guilty with Vin Diesel and Mortal Thoughts, featuring Demi Moore and Glenne Headly.
More recently, production crews recreated vintage street scenes around Avenue A and Third Street depicting the 1970s and 1980s for Deliver Me From Nowhere, a Bruce Springsteen biographical film starring Jeremy Allen White that used filming locations in Bayonne, the outlet reports. Other productions tied to the city include Our Man From Jersey, starring Mark Wahlberg, and Nonnas, featuring Vince Vaughn.
Paramount's Much Bigger Bet on Bayonne
The possible high school shoot comes as Paramount builds out a far larger footprint in the city. The studio has signed a minimum 10-year lease with 1888 Studios for more than 285,000 square feet of space, according to Variety. The full complex is planned for a 58-acre site and is designed to include 23 soundstages and more than 1.1 million square feet of production space, per the Hudson County View.
The planned 1888 Studios complex spans 1.6 million square feet and is designed to include 23 soundstages. The facility, designated New Jersey's first film-lease partner facility in May 2024, is expected to become operational in the fourth quarter of 2028, Variety reports.
To accommodate the project, Bayonne's City Council considered zoning changes in September 2026 to permit film production in certain light industrial districts, changes that would affect the Paramount project on Le Fante Way as well as the 1888 Studios site. A city council agenda had earlier proposed allowing film studios and media production as principal uses in Light Industrial Zones, with a public hearing and final passage scheduled for June 17, 2026.
Riding New Jersey's Film Boom
The potential Bayonne High shoot fits into a much larger statewide surge. New Jersey's film-incentive program supported 73 projects in 2025, up from 46 the year before, and spending by productions using that program is estimated to have topped $1 billion in 2025 compared with $833 million in 2024, according to Variety's broader reporting on the state's production boom. The state's overall in-state production spending had already hit $833 million in 2024, surpassing the previous record of $701 million set in 2022, per the New Jersey Economic Development Authority.
New Jersey has also locked in long-term funding for the incentive program, securing $439 million annually through 2049, Variety reports. Paramount isn't alone in chasing that momentum — Netflix has a $1 billion budget for a Fort Monmouth project planned with 12 soundstages. Lionsgate has committed to anchor a studio project in Newark, according to the same Variety account.
For now, the only certainty in Bayonne is uncertainty: no confirmed title, no cast, and no locked-in schedule, just a superintendent's word that a Paramount production might come to Bayonne in February or March. District officials say more clarity should come once they connect with the producer.
