Standing in Hollywood actors guild SAG-AFTRA’s Los Angeles headquarters alongside a cavalcade of movie trade gamers, Mayor Karen Bass pledged Tuesday to make it simpler for productions to shoot in Los Angeles.
The mayor signed an government directive to assist native movie and TV jobs — an motion that she mentioned will decrease prices and streamline metropolis processes for on-location filming, in addition to improve entry to legendary L.A. areas together with Griffith Observatory, Central Library and the Port of Los Angeles. The transfer was cheered by representatives from the Display screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Tv and Radio Artists and different union leaders.
Within the 115-odd years since D.W. Griffith shot the primary movie within the then-village of Hollywood, L.A. firmly established itself as the worldwide capital of movie manufacturing.
Nevertheless, whereas the town stays internationally synonymous with film magic, it has hemorrhaged manufacturing jobs to different states and international locations that supply beneficiant tax incentives, cheaper labor and extra filming-friendly bureaucracies.
Now, amid a broader downturn in movie and TV manufacturing, the native trade finds itself at an existential crossroads.
Will Los Angeles nonetheless be a spot the place center class, below-the-line leisure staff could make a residing and new productions can pencil out, or has the town completely ceded that floor?
The modifications ordered by the mayor are comparatively modest, however trade veterans are hopeful that they may ease a few of the burdens confronted by productions and easy logistical points.
“We’ve taken the industry for granted,” Bass mentioned. “We know that the industry is a part of our DNA here. And sometimes, if you think it’s a part of your DNA, you can think it’s always going to be here.”
Los Angeles’ signature trade has been battered by a collection of compounding crises and headwinds lately, from the COVID-19 pandemic closures that shuttered then severely curtailed manufacturing to the dual Hollywood labor strikes in 2023 and protracted stagnation that adopted.
The January 2025 fires have been merely the most recent blow. An estimated 30 movie and tv productions have been briefly shut down as a result of Palisades and Eaton fires, based on trade estimates.
Within the first three months of this yr, on-location manufacturing within the Better Los Angeles space declined by almost 1 / 4, in contrast with the identical interval a yr earlier.
The ache has reverberated far past the studio backlots. Eating places have struggled to maintain their doorways open and a stream of Hollywood staff have left the town.
Dwindling filming is having a broader “multiplier effect” on the native financial system, mentioned Councilmember Adrin Nazarian, who represents the japanese San Fernando Valley and launched an earlier Metropolis Council proposal to streamline the town’s movie allowing course of.
“A lot of the folks that are impacted live in the district. So it’s their mortgages. If mortgages aren’t being paid, people are losing homes, if people aren’t spending disposable income at restaurants or on the costs of living — raising their kids, raising their families — those retail tax dollars aren’t coming to the city,” Nazarian mentioned.
The trade’s challenges go far past productions not being adequately supported in Los Angeles.
Within the post-peak TV period, the movie and TV trade has, at the least in the meanwhile, considerably contracted.
The latest heyday of the streaming wars, when competing subscription companies unleashed a firehose of money and a glut of content material to try to chip away at Netflix’s market dominance, has ended.
Studios are greenlighting fewer exhibits and shedding jobs. Beneficiant tax incentive packages in different states and overseas have additionally made it far harder for L.A. productions to be economically possible.
All because of this even when the mayor have been to wave a magic wand and make it infinitely simpler for productions to shoot on L.A.’s iconic streets, the roles nonetheless wouldn’t routinely comply with.
However Bass’ directive will “help the immediate productions that are already here,” mentioned Teamsters Native 399 head Lindsay Dougherty, who represents greater than 6,000 film Teamsters in Hollywood, together with drivers and placement managers.
“All these things matter,” Dougherty mentioned, whereas additionally citing the necessity for extra funding for the state tax credit score program and doable federal laws. “When a production company is looking at budgeting, this is part of it.”
The mayor’s government directive has quite a few elements that intention to decrease manufacturing prices, together with decreasing the variety of metropolis workers required to be on-site at a filming location to a single workers member.
Bass can be directing all metropolis departments to report again on how their present charges “associated with on-site staff or inspections” will be lowered.
The order additionally goals to make it simpler to shoot at quite a few significantly illustrious city-owned properties. Town will decrease charges for filming on the Griffith Observatory, which movie advocates say has turn out to be prohibitively costly to make use of as a location. Filming will nonetheless be restricted to instances when the observatory isn’t in any other case open to the general public.
Bass additionally pledged to unsnarl the prolonged insurance coverage assessment ready interval that has prevented some productions from having the ability to movie on the Port of Los Angeles and mentioned she would reopen downtown’s Central Library to filming.
Business advocates have been elevating these points with the mayor’s workplace for the final couple of years and a few had beforehand expressed frustration that Bass had not been extra proactive on filming.
Workers author Samantha Masunaga contributed to this report.
