LA to Film Industry: "Baby Come Back"

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In 1990, almost every major blockbuster was filmed in Los Angeles. 

By 2003, only two-thirds. 

By 2014, the top summer blockbusters vanished from LA altogether.

Today, a measly 20% of North American film and TV productions choose California at all.

Hollywood is leaving Hollywood. And the economic bleeding is severe: when productions flee, they take with them $670,000 in daily spending, gradually eroding local small businesses and hollowing out neighborhoods built on the entertainment industry.

Many industry insiders now wonder if the trend is even reversible at this point. The Dailies caught up with LA City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian in an exclusive interview to discuss Los Angeles’s plan to stop the exodus.

In this report from The Dailies, we'll cover:

• The bureaucratic "onion" driving productions away from LA

• Nazarian's 7-point plan to win productions back

• The critical state bills that could level the playing field

• Why critics call these efforts "yacht subsidies" (and why they're wrong)

• The $38B elephant in Sacramento's room

• The one advantage other states can't incentivize

• Trump's film tariff proposal and what it means for the industry

• LA's Plan B if state bills fail to pass

The champion behind LA's fight…

Los Angeles City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian represents the 2nd District, home to film hubs like North Hollywood and Studio City. He's made keeping filming in LA his mission since taking office in November 2024, continuing efforts he started years earlier as a state assemblymember.

How it started: Canada said “eh?” and Hollywood said “sure!”…

The battle to keep productions in Hollywood didn't start yesterday. It began in the early 1990s when Canada first introduced aggressive tax incentives that proved irresistible to budget-conscious producers, luring them north of the border.

"We used to be able to get all types of filming coming to Los Angeles because the equipment was difficult to maneuver," Nazarian explained. "But technology has changed that. It's easy to shoot something with a minimal number of tools required because the tools now are very high capacity."

As cameras became more portable and digital filmmaking eliminated the need for massive infrastructure, productions grew increasingly mobile. Canada's favorable exchange rate combined with generous incentives created the perfect storm. Soon, other states caught on.

Louisiana pioneered domestic film incentives with its "Hollywood South" initiative in the early 2000s. Georgia followed in 2008, eventually becoming a production powerhouse hosting Marvel films and hits like 'The Walking Dead.' Suddenly, seeing palm trees in a "Los Angeles" scene meant one thing: it was filmed in Atlanta.

The economic impact is staggering:

• Each filming day lost costs the local economy $670,000 in direct spending

• The average TV series injects $40-50M into the local economy

• For every 71 projects that leave California, the state loses $1.6B economic activity

• A 2022 report estimated that California lost $8B in economic activity from 2015-2020 due to projects filming elsewhere

"It's not you, it's… actually it is you" – The problems behind LA's production exodus…

Picture LA's film permitting system as a bureaucratic onion—layer upon layer of regulations, stacked over decades, creating what Nazarian calls a "tenuous structure" that's driving productions away.

It's a perfect metaphor for how good intentions created a monster of red tape. Each time the city encountered an issue, officials added another requirement, another form, another fee—without ever cleaning out the old ones.

The result? A permitting nightmare with potential to derail an entire production day with hundreds of workers standing idle. It's the bureaucratic equivalent of hitting every red light on Wilshire Boulevard during rush hour.

That "somewhere else" increasingly means Georgia (no cap on tax incentives), New York ($800M annual cap), or international locations like British Columbia and France (both offering ~30% rebates with no caps).

Meanwhile, LA's permitting costs have skyrocketed compared to competitors. "When you compare it just to other cities in the United States, it's extremely high, let alone other countries," Nazarian said.

The conversation is becoming increasingly mainstream: In a recent podcast conversation, Rob Lowe told Adam Scott that his game show ‘The Floor’ films in Ireland because "it's cheaper to bring 100 American people to Ireland than to walk across the lot at Fox, right past the sound stages, and do it there." When Lowe asked if ‘Parks and Recreation’ would be filmed in Budapest today instead of California, Scott immediately replied, "100%. We would be in Budapest... It's so weird. Nothing shoots in Los Angeles. Nothing. Nothing."

Operation Paperwork Detox: LA's 7-point plan to win back Hollywood…

Most Angelenos don't understand the different levers officials can pull to effect change:

• Motions direct city departments to take specific actions—they have teeth and create immediate change.

• Resolutions formally state the city's position on external matters—they're essentially official letters of support or opposition.

• Executive Directives are mayoral orders that can immediately change how city departments operate.

Nazarian's "Keep Hollywood Home" motion, passed unanimously on April 29th, directs seven different city departments to report back by May 29th with concrete solutions for slashing red tape and cutting costs. That's real, local action that doesn't depend on Sacramento or Washington. The motion targets seven specific barriers:

1. Expensive permit fees that far exceed other filming locations

2. Unnecessary public safety personnel requirements that inflate budgets

3. High costs for using public property as filming locations

4. Lack of film-certified public safety officers at competitive rates

5. Price gouging for crew parking and base camps

6. Complex, multi-department permitting processes that create confusion

7. Overly restrictive stage certification requirements limiting available spaces

Currently, productions must navigate an obstacle course of seven different entities: Fire Department, Police Department, Recreation and Parks, Bureau of Public Works, Economic Workforce and Development Department, Transportation Department, and FilmLA. It's enough to make even veteran location managers reach for the Advil.

The goal now? Create a streamlined, checklist-style approach giving producers clarity from day one:

And the initiative just got a major boost: On Tuesday, Mayor Karen Bass issued an executive directive ordering city departments to "cut regulations and streamline processes." The directive makes iconic locations like Griffith Observatory cheaper to shoot at and—crucially—requires only a single city staffer on set instead of multiple firefighters and off-duty police.

The incentive arms race: Why LA needs Sacramento to win…

While LA's motion addresses local bureaucracy, it can't solve the fundamental math problem: other states and countries are offering more money to lure productions away.

This is where Nazarian's experience in both state and local government comes into play. Having served as an assemblymember from 2012 to 2022 before joining the City Council, he's familiar with Sacramento's legislative process and is working to amplify LA's perspective at the state level.

On May 9th, the City Council passed two resolutions supporting critical state bills:

SB 630 (introduced by Senator Ben Allen) and AB 1138 (introduced by Assemblymembers Rick Chavez Zbur and Isaac Bryan) would:

• Increase California's film tax credit cap from $330M to $750M annually

• Raise the credit rate to 35% (40% in some cases) (In plain English: Studios would get back 35¢ instead of 20-25¢ for every dollar they spend in California)

• Expand eligible projects to include animation, short series, and competition shows

• Add diversity incentives and refundable credits (Which means: smaller productions receive actual cash if their credits exceed their tax bill)

The $38B elephant in the room…

California is staring down a projected $38B budget deficit, and SB 630 and AB 1138 require a two-thirds majority vote to pass—a political mountain to climb even in good times.

As of May 5th, SB 630 sits on the Senate Appropriations Committee's suspense file, while AB 1138 was re-referred to the Assembly Committee on Appropriations on April 28th.

In Sacramento-speak, the “suspense file” is where costly bills go to be reviewed—and often quietly killed—if they’re seen as too expensive. It’s a red flag, especially in a budget crisis year.

This is familiar territory for Nazarian. His previous effort to extend the film tax credit program (AB 2936 in 2018) stalled under similar circumstances.

The challenges then are the same as now:

• Budget constraints force difficult prioritization (Why fund films when potholes, housing, education, and healthcare all need urgent attention?)

• The "corporate handout" narrative resonates with voters ("Nobody wants to subsidize a director's third yacht")

• A two-thirds vote threshold is extremely difficult to reach

LA's Plan B if state bills fail…

When we asked Nazarian what happens if these bills stall in Sacramento, his answer revealed a proactive mindset:

Instead of pinning all his hopes on Sacramento, Nazarian is betting on his local motion delivering immediate relief while continuing to push for state and federal action. It's a multi-front battle that doesn't depend on any single victory.

The stakes are personal for him:

The Tariff heard 'round Hollywood…

On May 4th, President Trump proposed a 100% tariff on "foreign films," suddenly elevating runaway production from an industry concern to a national conversation. While the proposal faces significant skepticism, it has accomplished something invaluable: shining a spotlight on the issue at the federal level.

In the weeks following Trump's announcement, a broad coalition of unions, guilds, and studios sent a letter to Washington advocating for federal action on production incentives. Actor Jon Voight, serving as Trump's "special ambassador" to Hollywood, has also suggested a combination of federal tax incentives, tax code changes, co-production treaties, and more targeted tariffs.

Nazarian himself has pitched a federal film tax credit, saying: "Let's pass AB 1138 and SB 630, let's enact Governor Newsom's expansion of the state tax credit, and let's pressure Washington to create a federal tax credit for motion picture production. Other countries support their film industries, we need to do the same."

Why these aren't yacht subsidies…

When tax incentives for the film industry come up in policy discussions, they're often portrayed as handouts to wealthy studios and movie stars. Critics cite studies claiming just $0.65-$0.80 returned per dollar invested in film incentives.

Councilmember Nazarian doesn't just disagree with this characterization—he finds it fundamentally misinformed.

This reflects the reality of his district, where union members from IATSE and Teamsters make up a significant portion of the workforce. "The people that make it happen are middle class, blue collar workers. That's critically vital because those are the folks that end up hurting the most,” Nazarian explained.

But the impact extends far beyond just the crews directly employed in production. The film industry creates an entire economic ecosystem in Los Angeles. When a production leaves LA, it doesn't just take jobs for actors and directors. It takes work from:

• Local diners that feed crews during early morning calls

• Hardware stores that supply set builders

• Dry cleaners that handle costumes (Nazarian points out, "It's why we have 24-hour dry cleaning. You don't find that in any other place. We needed to have that here because PAs are working around the clock to make sure that everything's ready for the set the following day.")

• Family-owned prop houses, florists, caterers, and hundreds of other small businesses

The one thing other states can't incentivize…

While other locations can match California's incentives, Nazarian believes LA has a unique asset that can't be easily replicated: its concentration of talent and infrastructure.

LA's film industry operates as a flexible ecosystem where crews, talent, and resources can rapidly assemble for a project, complete it, and then reconfigure into entirely new teams for different productions. This "pop-up factory" model only works because of the dense concentration of specialized skills all living in the same region.

"When we continue having people come into the region, we benefit off of that talent. We never want that talent to go away," he stressed. "This is the industry that's led to Los Angeles growing and becoming what it is today."

In other words, while tax incentives may look similar on paper (hovering around 30% across different locations), LA offers something money can't buy: a century of accumulated expertise and infrastructure that allows productions to scale up and down with unmatched efficiency.

Nazarian's long game: From 2009 to today…

Nazarian's current fight is the culmination of over a decade of advocacy. As Chief of Staff to Assemblymember Paul Krekorian, he helped enact California's original Film and Television Tax Credit in 2009, which has generated $26B in economic activity and supported nearly 200,000 jobs. That's the kind of commitment usually reserved for marathon runners and people trying to finish 'Infinite Jest.'

In 2018, his AB 2936 bill attempted to extend the program but stalled due to budget concerns and "handout" criticisms — challenges that persist today with AB 1138 and SB 630.

Despite these setbacks, Nazarian remains resolute: "I gotta, I wanna, I'm gonna work my tail off to keep Hollywood home." If determination were tax credits, Hollywood's future would already be secure.

What's next?

• May 29, 2025: City departments must report back with specific recommendations to implement Nazarian's motion

• Mid-June 2025: Potential hearing dates for SB 630 on the Senate Appropriations suspense file

• July 1, 2025: Current Film and TV Tax Credit Program expires, making these efforts increasingly urgent

• September 12, 2025: Last day for bills to pass in the 2025 legislative session

The coming months will reveal whether this coordinated effort can reverse years of production decline—keeping not just studios but generations of skilled crew members from leaving the entertainment capital of the world.