Other cities stole Hollywood from Los Angeles, now LA wants it back

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.  California's top news, sports and entertainment delivered ...