Hollywood pushes for more LA productions post wildfires

BBC News

14-02-2025

Hollywood may be known as Tinseltown, a dream factory at the heart of the global entertainment industry. But nowadays crews are more likely to film in Atlanta, London, Toronto or Sydney than in Los Angeles.Cheaper labour and better tax breaks have lured producers away from the City of Angels for years. The wildfires, which killed at least 29 people and destroyed thousands of homes, have only added to this existential crisis.Now, many here are calling on the state - and studios and streaming services - to boost local production."The best thing the studios could do for fire relief is to bring work back for the rank and file LA film workers," says Mark Worthington, a production designer whose home burned down in Altadena."That's what we want."
Mr Worthington had already been struggling to cope with the city's downturn, noting he hadn't set foot on an LA set in two years. Covid, labour strikes, and the inevitable end of the streaming boom had led many producers to try and save costs by skipping town - sometimes leaving the country altogether.Why Hollywood's big boom has gone bustProductions in the US decreased 26% last year compared to pre-strike levels in 2022, according to ProdPro, which tracks global production. In Australia and New Zealand, production was up 14% and in the UK it was up nearly 1%, with Canada up 2.8%.The loss clearly stings. The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a band synonymous with Los Angeles, with many love songs to the City of Angels. But a biopic about the band is being filmed in Atlanta, Georgia - which has become a major production hub due to its lucrative tax breaks - not LA.Before the fires, "Survive until '25" had become a kind of mantra for Mr Worthington and other filmmakers who hoped for a turnaround of fortune. Instead, their city went up in flames."It's crushing in terms of how you see yourself as a creative individual and just as a person, and then on top of that to have these fires," Mr Worthington says. "This is adding a horrible other thing to pile on top of all the other difficulties and our own work situation over the last couple years."
Hollywood's studios and streaming services have donated more than $70m (£56m) to fire relief efforts and have turned the glitzy awards season parties and red carpets typical this time of year into major fundraisers.Many say these efforts are not enough and that Hollywood's biggest companies need to commit to filming in LA. But studios don't often make business decisions based on the greater good of workers in one city - ultimately, they care about the bottom line. The reality is LA is expensive and the vast majority of industry jobs here are union protected – so they come with high salaries and expensive health care and pensions.Studios are, however, very responsive to A-list actors.Megastar Vin Diesel helped ensure Universal Pictures would finish filming the latest Fast and Furious movie in Los Angeles."LA really, really, really needs production to help rebuild," Diesel said in an Instagram post."Los Angeles is where Fast and Furious started filming 25 years ago… and now Fast will finally return home."
Nearly 20,000 people – including actors Keanu Reeves, Zooey Deschanel and Kevin Bacon – have signed a "Stay in LA" petition urging the state's leaders to temporarily remove caps on production tax incentives for LA County.It's part of a grassroots campaign started by director Sarah Adina Smith and other filmmakers who want California to use its emergency powers to boost tax incentives for the next three years to make filming in LA more affordable and help heal Los Angeles. They also want studios to commit to making 10% more productions in Los Angeles."We need to bring production back to LA and get LA working again if we want to rebuild," says Ms Smith.
Before the fires, California Gov Newsom had already proposed to more than double the tax credit the state offers to producers of films and TV shows that shoot in California – changing the annual credit from $330m to $750m, but that must be approved by the state legislature and might not come into effect until the summer.He says the incentives are good for the economy and that California's programme has generated more than $26bn in economic activity and supported more than 197,000 cast and crew jobs across the state.If passed, the subsidy would be the most generous offered by any US state except Georgia, which doesn't have a cap on the amount it gives to productions per year. Stay in LA wants the cap lifted now.President Donald Trump has also said he plans to make Hollywood great again with the help of actors Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone, who have been tapped to be "special ambassadors" for"troubled Hollywood".It's not yet clear what they have in mind - they did not agree to an interview - but several executives said the instability caused by the Trump administration's trade wars make risk-averse Hollywood studios nervous. The Canadian dollar recently hit 22-year lows making Canada even more attractive to Hollywood.
On a rainy day more than a month after the fires, Mr Worthington, the production designer, and his partner Mindy Elliott, a film editor, inspected the remains of their home, wishing they'd taken some of their art when they evacuated. They marvelled that a cactus was regrowing next to where their SUV had melted."If only we'd had this rain in January," says Ms Elliott.Although he is critical that the tax breaks amount to "corporate welfare" for behemoth companies, Mr Worthington says they are a necessary evil if LA wants to compete - both Australia and the UK now have more lucrative tax breaks than California.Ms Smith, the co-founder of Stay in LA, likens the decline of Hollywood productions to the fall of Detroit, whose once formidable automotive industry collapsed, leaving much of the city desolate and impoverished."Once you ruin that infrastructure and that legacy, it's not so easy to build it back again," she says. "If we let Hollywood die, it could be for good."Others think it's naïve to think that any incentives will usher in a new Golden Age of Hollywood.Pointing out the melted remains of what used to be his piano and his drum set in the music studio of his incinerated Topanga Canyon home, composer Matthew Ferraro wipes away tears for what he and his wife have lost.His once spectacular hilltop home is now rubble and ash and Ferraro says he's still in shock, consumed with thoughts of where he will sleep on Tuesday, rather than his future in LA."I think it's wishful thinking for people who are still in love with, like yesteryear's dream of Hollywood, but that's just not how it works anymore," says Ferraro, who composed music for The Incredibles and The Minority Report among others.
About a mile away, Jamie Morse's home also burned. Topanga Canyon has always attracted artists, musicians and dreamers - and Morse had just quit her sensible day job to devote 2025 to making it in Hollywood, working fulltime on her comedic writing and performing.She laughs when asked about the terrible timing - and says she's grieving along with everyone else in LA, but remains hopeful."Whether they're performers or studio execs - people love this city," says Ms Morse, who now sleeps at friends' homes or in her car with her dog between comedy gigs or classes with her improv troupe, The Groundlings.Ms Morse wishes she'd taken more sentimental things when she evacuated with her dog, like a Toronto Blue Jays T-shirt which reminded her of her grandfather and her native Canada. But she's astonished that some of her notebooks and journals survived with some of her comedy writing intact."Where an entire stone table is, is in pieces, is like, absolutely decimated, melted," she said. "But pieces of paper survived… It's truly unbelievable."Does she think it's fate? A sign that she is meant to make it in Hollywood?"I'm choosing to believe that this is a sign," she says, adding that there will be "beautiful, creative things to come out of this very, very crappy time."