By India McCarty
Movie and TV production levels in Los Angeles have plummeted over the last few months.
“Numbers like these make it plain: California can’t afford to surrender any more work to its competitors,” Philip Sokoloski, FilmLA’s VP of Integrated Communications, said of the organization’s latest report.
FilmLA reported that, from January through March of this year, every category of production saw losses compared to the same period from last year. Shooting in LA. decreased over 22% to 5,295 shoot days over that time span.
TV saw some of the biggest losses; TV productions were down an estimated 30% versus the same period in 2024 and almost 50% compared to the five year average. There were just 13 TV pilots shot in LA over the last quarter.
Some have pointed to the recent Palisades and Eaton wildfires for the reason behind the low numbers of productions, but FilmLA said the effects of those disasters were only “temporary.”
“Loss of filming opportunity in no way compares to the cost of the Eaton and Palisades Fires in terms of loss of life, resident displacement and property damage,” Sokoloski explained. “The fires sent many productions scrambling to reschedule shoots and displaced hundreds of industry workers from their homes. But their impact on local filming levels appears to have been temporary.”
Instead, FilmLA pointed to the growing number of productions that are taking place in other states. New York, Georgia and Ontario have more than doubled their stage-based productions over the last five years, and more states are looking to get in on the action.
Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton and Renée Zellweger recently pushed the “True to Texas” initiative, which would bring more movie and TV productions to the Lone Star State.
“A small fraction of [the] Texas budget surplus [could] turn this state into the new Hollywood,” Harrelson said in an ad featuring the A-list actors (video via Instagram).
In response, many in LA are pushing for their own financial incentives to encourage productions to stay in California, including “Stay in LA,” which proposes a tax incentive for productions that shoot in LA County over the next three years.
“Actors, HODS, writers, producers, and directors want to live here and see their families. They don’t want to go to Bulgaria or South Africa or Canada to shoot, and that brings below-the-line jobs back to LA,” writer and director Alexandra Pechman told Deadline. “But we need to incentivize people to stay here and rebuild and support our small businesses. This city was built on people coming here to make movies — let’s keep them here.”
LA’s movie and TV production industry is still working to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and the wildfires. Only time will tell if Hollywood can reclaim their title of “Entertainment Capital of the World.”
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