California Gov.Gavin Newsom says Hollywood is returning to its glory after years of production fleeing Los Angeles for cheaper filming locations, but industry experts tell Fox News Digital the sector is still reeling from production "decimation.""We need a major rescue, like, immediately," Shadowcast Pictures owner Jay Ellison said.Major studios are increasingly opting to film television shows and movies outside California, such as Canada and overseas in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, as well as to domestic production hubs in Georgia and New Mexico.Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison is also reportedly considering relocating Paramount’s headquarters — which could divert billions of production dollars from California — while production of scripted television shows in Los Angeles is down nearly 30% since 2019, according to Luminate data.JOE ROGAN MOCKS GAVIN NEWSOM FOR DISMISSING GROWING STATE PROBLEMS AS LA FILM PRODUCTION CRATERSExperts say production work has been hemorrhaging at a rapid pace for decades and that Los Angeles has lost tens of thousands of film and television jobs over the years.
"Why did it take so long for the political establishment to take this seriously? Because Hollywood's business has been leeching away for the last three decades," entertainment lawyer Jonathan Handel told Fox News Digital.StageRunner founder and CEO Jason Fisher, formerly head of production at Disney, Paramount and AMC, said he began noticing the rise of runaway production over two decades ago."Production has been slowly and then speeding up really over the last two years, leaving California for other states and other countries and really nothing was done until it was almost too late," he told Fox News Digital.Several popular episodic television series were filmed outside of California, including Paramount’s "Landman" in Fort Worth, Texas and Netflix’s "Stranger Things" in Atlanta, Georgia.Despite LA-based studios’ efforts to film locally, the substa...