There’s not enough work. And especially not enough work to afford to live in Los Angeles. More often than not, it seems, that’s what people hear when the topic turns to Hollywood’s film and TV production in the industry’s home base over the past couple of years. Superhero movies have fled to London; three major studios (Netflix, Paramount and Lionsgate) have inked expansive deals to build or lease in new production bases in New Jersey; states like Georgia, Louisiana and New Mexico are fighting for their share of projects with generous tax incentives while Illinois is becoming a player in its own right. And that’s not to mention California’s longtime rival New York, which has commanded a large share of the entertainment industry for decades and looks to grow its presence, too.
In L.A., like in other locales, studio lots are touting themselves as open for business for influencers to set up shop and fill the gap left by a decline in network orders for TV episodes and scripted series. (The Fox lot in Century City has a recent sunny pitch: “For the first time in years, Fox studio lot stages are available for booking!”) Other studio operators are consolidating their assets, putting up “for sale” signs on soundstage complexes that don’t have an anchor tenant (think: a TV series that shoots for multiple seasons) while focusing on core properties. The operator of Radford Studio Center, a historic Studio City complex that CBS sold off in 2021 for $1.85 billion as part of Paramount’s then-effort to “slim down assets to scale up in streaming” is reported to have defaulted on a $1.1 billion loan.
Victor Coleman, the CEO of Hudson Pacific, the soundstage operator behind Sunset Bronson Studios in L.A., which Netflix leases, said in November that state and local officials took the industry “for granted for a very long time and realized now that they have to be competitive.” The exec added to analysts on a Nov. 5 earnings call, “It’s clearly evident that they recognize they need to do more. We just hope it’s going to be enough and quickly.”
Now the full view of 2025 is starting to come in to focus, with multiple production indicator reports showing the full year (or multiyear) data points beyond the sober quarterly updates. The latest arrives from Hollywood data provider Luminate, which released its annual report on Jan. 21 showing, in its words, a “staggering” 24 percent drop year-over-year in major scripted film and TV projects shooting in Los Angeles. Its six-year look at the data illustrates a long, mostly downward line (save for 2022’s streaming production boom before cutbacks) for production in L.A. as other major locales take market share.
That echoes the tally from the city’s primary shoot-day tracker, the nonprofit FilmLA, which disclosed that feature film shooting in L.A. declined by 16.8 percent year-over-year while television shoots declined by 14.7 percent and commercial shoots declined by 14.5 percent. Overall, shoot days ended at 19,694 in total last year in L.A., far below the 36,792 days just three years ago. (Midway through the year, FilmLA handed over permit tracking for Santa Monica to that municipality; the city hasn’t released an update on shooting days there yet.)
State and local officials are seeing these same numbers and have been aiming to take action. That urgency, in part, led to Gov. Gavin Newsom signing a bill in July to boost incentives for film and TV projects from $330 million to $750 million annually. But that effort was framed as the first necessary step among many others, including efforts to cut more red tape to make it not only tax-friendly to shoot in the state, but make sure that there are fewer hurdles for indie filmmakers and major producers to step over in order to do so.
To that point, the office of L.A Mayor Karen Bass — who’s now running for reelection in a race that voters will decide upon in June — on Jan. 15 released a list of actions taken to make it easier to film in L.A. That includes a proposal to lower fees to shoot at the iconic Griffith Observatory, a pilot program for a tiered permitting structure for so-called low-impact productions, more timely response times to review applications and more nuts-and-bolts updates. “City leaders know that City Hall needs to be a champion for keeping entertainment production jobs right here at home,” Bass stated.
California’s film commission is also countering other states by offering tax credits to projects that tell Golden State-ish stories. That includes Fox’s Baywatch reboot, which nabbed $21 million in tax incentives and will begin production in March at Venice Beach, or Universal’s Snoop Dogg biopic, which received $17 million in incentives to film in L.A., or Ang Lee’s feature epic Gold Mountain about the California Gold Rush, which will shoot in Sacramento County with $7.7 million in tax credits.
But, increasingly, the streaming business has become a global distribution strategy (see: Netflix and its newly disclosed 325 million subscriber milestone, a figure approaching the total population of the U.S.). Meanwhile, the number of movies that are made for theatrical release on 2,000 screens is declining (in 2025 that totaled 112 movies, down from 120 in 2019, per Comscore’s tally). That means the major studios (and the tech giants that own studios, like Amazon and Apple) are not only seeking out the best incentive-driven locations for shoots but are looking to film in countries that ultimately are the target audience for the shows or features being developed.
The Luminate report illustrates that shift over a five-year span, showing the number of scripted features and TV projects shooting in the U.S. dropping by 12 percentage points during the half decade. Recently, Canada and the United Kingdom have been beneficiaries, as filming counts in those countries rose 10 percent and 11 percent, respectively, in the fourth quarter year-over-year, per industry tracker ProdPro’s tally.
And it’s not just Los Angeles that had a down year in production. ProdPro estimates that total production spend overall sat at $41.8 billion, which sank 8 percent year-over-year. No wonder there’s such sharp debate over the tug-of-war sale of one of Hollywood’s last crown jewels, Warner Bros., which would eliminate another buyer for projects. Both would-be suitors, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos and Paramount’s David Ellison, are promising there’ll be more jobs, more movies (and more movies in theaters) and more work. If only they’re the ones that win out for the studio.
