Los Angeles is like that guy or girl who starts fighting for you again, only when they realize you have options – really attractive ones, who are wining and dining you.
Except you’re Hollywood and you’re spending more time filming in cities like Atlanta, Santa Fe, Vancouver, London, Budapest, Sydney, and Limerick.
LA is finally snapping out of its complacency and entitlement, now that its local film industry is in crisis, and it’s losing one of the crown jewels of its economy to cities around the world.
“We’ve lost camera houses. We’ve lost props houses, wardrobe houses. It’s the make-or-break moment to become Detroit or not,” said Noelle Stehman, a showrunner and co-founder of the grassroots organization Stay in LA.
Thanks to a movement of film industry professionals and key partners in City Hall, Los Angeles is starting to cut red tape and fees in order to incentivize Hollywood productions to shoot in Los Angeles, again.
“We are supposed to be the film capital of the world. It should be the easiest and cheapest place. But it is both the most expensive and the most difficult,” Stehman said.
“It’s death by a thousand needles, so to speak,” added Henrik Bastin, executive producer of Amazon MGM Studios crime drama “Ballard.” “I’ve been shooting here in LA since 2013, 2014, every year, and I think that it’s gotten more and more complicated, by each year.”
“A lot of productions leave because they go anywhere else and everyone welcomes them, rolls out the red carpet and says ‘yes, let us help you,’” said Kate Holguin, a social impact producer and co-founder of Stay in LA.
That’s a major reason the number of shoot days recorded in LA County was down about 50% in 2025, compared to 2018. It was the lowest figure ever recorded, aside from 2020.
Now less than one in five pieces of scripted content made by US production companies, is produced here in LA.
That’s a big economic impact, considering the average on-location shoot adds $670,000 and 1,500 jobs a day to the local economy, according to the California Production Coalition.
Los Angeles gradually lost its production market share to other cities because it got complacent and took its film industry dominance for granted.
During the Golden Age of Hollywood, eight studios set up shop and by 1930, made 95% of all American films, mostly here in LA.
But LA failed to adapt its filming rules and fees with the changing times, making it harder and harder for filmmakers to film here. Now compound that with the skyrocketing cost of living.
Even film workers are giving up on the entertainment capital and moving away, because it’s become too difficult to live and work here.
“I’ve talked to some of my constituents who literally are auctioning off their Emmy Award in order to be able to survive,” said LA City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian.
The share of workers in the motion picture and sound recording industry who live in California declined to just 30 percent in 2023, from 50 percent in the 90s. That figure has since rebounded to about 35 percent.
More people are leaving LA than any other county in the US, according to new census data from the last five years.
Watch the video above to find out how one of America’s most iconic cities is finally fighting to win back the people and jobs that made it rich, glamorous and desirable in the first place. And whether it’s too little, too late.
