Bringing Production Back to California Is Trickier Than Expected

Over the last few weeks, we've covered the idea of bringing production back to the United States. It began even before the Trump Tariffs, as California mobilized after the fires to try to get work here to help people who are struggling.

But right off the bat, we knew this was going to be a much harder issue than just shooting things here.

Let's dive in.

Why Production Left

Shooting film and TV in the United States, especially California, is prohibitively expensive. Giant corporations are public entities built to make money, and they saw a windfall of it if they just shot things outside of the US, where rebates made it much easier.

America was significantly behind other countries when it came to tax incentives and rebates, and California had so much red tape and was so expensive to shoot that even goodwill after the fires was not going to convince large corporations to change their course.

There were millions, if not billions of dollars at stake.

Bringing production back to the USA, and California specifically, is very tricky. It's going to take a much more intricate plan than just lowering costs. The reason is that production has already left. Only 20% of all USA movie and TV production occurs in California now, down from 66% in 2003.

That exodus over the last 20 years has cost the state billions. According to reports, for every 71 projects that leave California, the state loses $1.6B in economic activity, and a 2022 report estimated that California lost $8B in economic activity from 2015-2020 due to projects going to other places to film.

What Los Angeles and California really needed was leaders who were actually intent on being here (Newsom is either running for president or done as governor) to lead the way.

That's why I was so pumped to read about Los Angeles City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian's plan in The Dailies.

Nazarian's Plan

Nazarian's goal is to keep Hollywood home, which seems simple, but as discussed, it's not. We have to have all hands on deck. So he's passed a resolution that makes seven different city departments report back by May 29th with concrete solutions for slashing red tape and cutting costs.

This is stuff that doesn't rely on Trump, it's stuff we can do right here, right now.

These are seven things holding back production here, according to his motion:

1. Expensive permit fees that far exceed other filming locations
2. Unnecessary public safety personnel requirements that inflate budgets
3. High costs for using public property as filming locations
4. Lack of film-certified public safety officers at competitive rates
5. Price gouging for crew parking and base camps
6. Complex, multi-department permitting processes that create confusion
7. Overly restrictive stage certification requirements limiting available spaces

The State Level

While all these things are good, we still need Newsom and the people in Sacramento to pay attention and pass their own legislation.

The big ones are SB 630 (introduced by Senator Ben Allen) and AB 1138 (introduced by Assembly members Rick Chavez Zbur and Isaac Bryan).

Here's what they're going to do:

• Increase California's film tax credit cap from $330M to $750M annually
• Raise the credit rate to 35% (40% in some cases) (In plain English: Studios would get back 35¢ instead of 20-25¢ for every dollar they spend in California)
• Expand eligible projects to include animation, short series, and competition shows
• Add diversity incentives and refundable credits (Which means: smaller productions receive actual cash if their credits exceed their tax bill)

What If It All Fails?

California has a bad budget problem. We're like $38 billion in the red, so passing two laws, plus another bunch of measures, all giving money back to people who make film and TV here, might be hard to pass.

But the alternative is that Hollywood leaves...and with it, the economic windfall that is making movies and TV in this state also slowly leaves.

I've seen a lot of people talk about whether or not the studios would ever leave. Well, Netflix is building a studio in New Jersey, so I would say anything is possible.

Plan B is just hoping the local endeavors in LA help the city lure enough talent to stay here, where the bleeding stops and people still work. But if that's the best we get, I'll be pretty depressed.

The coming months will let us know what happens with all these plans, and we'll work to keep you informed.

Let me know what you think in the comments.