FilmLA, partner film office for the City and County of Los Angeles and other local jurisdictions, has updated its three-year analysis of U.S.-produced, first-run, English-language scripted projects. And the findings include a significant decline in production with competition on the rise from other states and countries that are offering substantive incentives. This in turn has FilmLA calling for a major expansion of the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program.
As presented in FilmLA’s 2023 Scripted Content Study, Greater Los Angeles recently endured significant loss within the economically critical entertainment production sector. The region’s capture of the most economically valuable forms of television and feature film production declined by 19.7 percent to just 183 projects last year. This is 45 fewer projects than Greater Los Angeles captured the year prior, and only a fraction of the 990 total projects captured by all jurisdictions in 2023.
Over the past three years, California’s signature industry has lost market share to its array of U.S. and global competitors, including the United Kingdom, Ontario, New York and Georgia. Greater Los Angeles went from a nearly 23 percent capture of qualified projects in 2021, to a 22 percent share in 2022, and 18 percent share in 2023.
Put another way, last year viewing audiences enjoyed 31 fewer TV series, seven fewer TV movies, two fewer theatrical films, and five fewer streaming movies that were made in Los Angeles by working Californians.
“The entertainment industry feeds around $43 billion in wages into the state economy,” observed FilmLA president Paul Audley. “But how long can California subsist–or help businesses and families thrive–on an ever-thinner slice of a shrinking production pie?”
Audley and others worry that California’s loss of global production share risks more than international bragging rights. Hollywood’s coveted leadership in entertainment production was achieved over a century of new business investment. Over the last 30 years, competing jurisdictions have applied direct financial incentives and infrastructure investments to win attention from film producers and build stable film economies. As indicated in FilmLA’s study, rival jurisdictions now capture four out of every five film and television projects and their associated jobs.
According to the 2024 Otis College Report on the Creative Economy, 27 percent of the nation’s domestic film and television workforce resides in Greater Los Angeles. Given these workers’ heavy dependence on local filmmaking, reduced project output raises significant concerns.
“We’re now at a place where inadequate investment in this industry places other economic supports at risk,” Audley observed. “For each film industry supplier that closes his or her doors due to lack of steady work–those entrepreneurs no longer employ people, generate sales taxes or pay rent. Their former employees, lacking an income, then have no money for groceries, tuition and bills. When local industries decline the effects can be far ranging, so this is definitely a problem California needs to address.”
“FilmLA’s latest 2023 Scripted Content Study underscores the challenges facing our entertainment industry, not just in Los Angeles County but elsewhere in the nation and globe. These last two years have been devastating to all the workers and businesses in the County due to the labor strikes of 2023, advancing and ever-changing technology, recovery from the pandemic, and other factors,” said Kelly LoBianco, director of the Department of Economic Opportunity. “Now more than ever, the County Film Office and the Department of Economic Opportunity is committed to implementing efforts to support, retain, and attract productions by continuing to streamline its permitting process, reduce regulations, and craft new innovative ways to locally incentivize those productions.”
“This report validates the lived experience of grips, camera operators, caterers, and various essential small business owners over the last two years,” said Lindsey P. Horvath, chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. “Our community members’ livelihoods are on the line, which is why Los Angeles County launched the Entertainment Business Interruption Fund, and we continue to explore ways to incentivize local production. FilmLA’s report underscores the urgent work required to save an industry critical to our local economy and identity as Angelenos.”
“Today, Greater Los Angeles is one place among many where film, television and commercial projects are made,” Audley observed. “More support for California’s film industry, including a vast expansion of the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program, is required in order to increase the rate of industry investment in our state.”
