Everyone in the industry wants to forget 2023. Especially everyone in the industry in L.A.
A new FilmLA report has found that only 18 percent of the scripted TV and film projects released last year were made in the greater Los Angeles area. That’s down from 22 percent of 2022 releases and 23 percent in 2021.
Here’s a big problem: 27 percent of the industry’s workers (still) reside in L.A., according to a 2024 Otis College report.
Translation: Around town, there’s already not enough work to go around — and the work continues to leave.
All told, the number of these “most economically valuable forms of television and feature film production,” as FilmLA puts it, declined by about 20 percent from ’22. A pair of strikes certainly didn’t help, but the WGA and SAG-AFTRA shutdowns were not limited to Los Angeles workers. Also, the full impact of the dual-strikes are not yet being felt in this report. FilmLA is using release dates, not production dates — a spokesperson for the group told IndieWire that they expect an even worse report for 2024.
L.A. accounted for 183 of the 990 top-tier TV and film projects (from any jurisdiction), 45 fewer than the area put out in 2022. Broken down by genre, viewers got 31 fewer TV series, seven fewer TV movies, two fewer theatrical films, and five fewer streaming movies last year from Los Angeles.
What FilmLA calls “California’s signature industry” (no offense to Silicon Valley or wine, we suppose) is taking the work to the UK, Ontario, New York, Georgia, and elsewhere.
The entertainment industry feeds about $43 billion in wages into the state economy. But for how long, FilmLA’s president Paul Audley wonders.
“How long can California subsist — or help businesses and families thrive — on an ever-thinner slice of a shrinking production pie?” he said in a statement accompanying the report.
And it’s not just the industry workers who will suffer, Audley warned.
“We’re now at a place where inadequate investment in this industry places other economic supports at risk,” he said. “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.”
We’re doing it, we’re doing it, Kelly LoBianco, the director of the Department of Economic Opportunity and Lindsey P. Horvath, the chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, said — basically.
“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,” LoBianco said in a statement provided by FilmLA. “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,” Horvath said. “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.”
