By Gavin Boyle
Industry insiders are raising the alarm about the rate at which productions are leaving Hollywood, setting the city up for a catastrophic fall it will never recover from.
“This is not hyperbole to say that if we don’t act, the California film and TV industry will become the next Detroit auto,” said Noelle Stehman, a member of the “Stay in L.A.” campaign.
The campaign is pushing for California lawmakers to quickly enact and transpose existing laws to make the state a viable location to shoot in again. As the costs of production in California have risen, other states in recent years have provided lucrative tax credits, along with an easier legal landscape to approach that has drawn hundreds of productions out of Hollywood. This has resulted in the disappearance of thousands of job opportunities in California almost overnight.
“The studios don’t care where they do the work. They’ll do it anywhere,” said California state senator Ben Allen, one of the lawmakers pushing to save his state. “They’re still producing shows. What a lot of our colleagues simply don’t understand is that this is a middle-class problem. The studio heads are going to be in Bel-Air no matter what.”
“I say this to my colleagues: Why do you think all these other governments are putting these really rich tax programs in place?” added state assemblyman Rick Zbur. “It’s because they pay for themselves, and because these jobs are jobs that people want. And why are we standing by and letting people cherry pick off the jobs that we have grown here?”
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As more opportunities pop up around the country, this move away from L.A. is only accelerating. A new report from FilmLA found that shooting in the city was down 22% this year, highlighting just how quickly this diaspora is occurring.
However, California is largely to blame for this departure as it has made its state absurdly expensive. Mel Gibson recently recalled how it would have been cheaper to fly his production to Europe for three days, paying for their flights and other travel expenses, than to film for one day in California.
California, meanwhile, has its most prominent officials trying to stem the tide and bring production back before it’s too late. In 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom approved a major increase to tax credits, providing an additional $330 million per year in funding through 2030. At the time, he revealed that previous tax credits had generated $24 in economic activity per dollar invested, highlighting just how important it is to keep production in-state.
While it remains to be seen if California will be able to keep itself situated as the entertainment production capital of the world, the state certainly will not go down without a fight, but its policies may be too difficult of a mountain to overcome.
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