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Amid declining production levels in the Greater Los Angeles area across all filming categories, FilmLA warned on Monday: ”California can’t afford to surrender any more work to its competitors.”

FilmLA’s latest report on at the first quarter of the year painted an ongoing sorry picture of the home of Hollywood. Overall production declined by 22.4% and features fell by 28.9% to 451 shoot days (SD) in the January to March period.

“Each drop reflected the impact of global production cutbacks and California’s ongoing loss of work to rival territories,” the office noted, several months after it reported that 2024 was the second least productive year behind Covid-afflicted 2020.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is trying to get the state’s lawmakers to more than double the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program from $330m to $750m, and wants to make the initiative more competitive internationally.

The cost of shooting in the United States has become a deterrent, and it remains to be seen how president Donald Trump’s volatile trade policy might impact US-based production, both in terms of budgets and the appetite of international productions.

FilmLA said every filming category it tracked declined in Q1, with commercials “coming closest to breakeven” on a 2.1% drop. Television production fell 30.5% to 1,670 SD.

The drop in television production is particularly impactful on the region. It peaked in Greater Los Angeles in 2021 with 18,560 SD and has fallen by 58.4% since then to 7,716 in 2024.

In Q1 of this year, TV drama production fell by 38.9% to 440 SD, of which 77 days or 17.5% came from projects attached to the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program. Television comedy fell by 29.9% to 110 SD and reality TV by 26.4% to 969. Most television comedies are half-hour series and as such as ineligible for the state’s incentive, making them appealing targets for other jurisdictions.

A recent FilmLA analysis determined that the impact of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena wildfires was relatively minor. The areas have hosted 1,405 SD in the last four years, equating to approximately 1.3% of all regional filming. Approximately 545 unique filming locations fell within the fires’ burn zones, which remain off-limits for production.

FilmLA VP of integrated communications Philip Sokoloski said the California Production Coalition has estimated that the average location shoot adds $670,000 and 1,500 jobs daily to a local economy. “Numbers like these make it plain: California can’t afford to surrender any more work to its competitors,” he said.

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