As recently as a decade ago, vast hangars across Los Angeles were full of make-believe living rooms, restaurants, offices, streetscapes, and villains’ lairs. A troupe of workers toiled in each one, adjusting makeup, props, and sets, and preparing to change everything around for the next shoot. In nearby workshops, prop-makers and machinists turned out objects mundane and iconic, from breakaway bottles to Batman’s mask.
These days, a lot of that bustle is gone. Soundstage occupancy rates in L.A., which held at 90 percent or above from 2016 through 2022, dropped to 69 percent in 2023. The number of shooting days there fell by about 30 percent, from 12,308 in 2019 to 8,671 in 2023.
Prop shops have cut workers’ hours, and some have closed. Makeup artists and set designers, who once had to turn away work, now wait for offers—and dip into their savings.
Meanwhile, production is thriving elsewhere. In London, the major streaming services are expanding their operations, marquee studios are fully booked, and the city’s film agency is predicting a windfall in production investments in the next five years. At the same time, YouTube creators have started building their own studios, hiring hundreds of workers.
What happened to Hollywood?
Patrick Adler is a co-founder of Westwood Economics & Planning Consultants in Los Angeles, which researches California’s creative economy, including film and television production. The entertainment industry in Hollywood is at a turning point, Adler says—but not because it's losing out to other industry hubs: In part, the decline in L.A. is a correction to the overproduction of movies and TV before and during the pandemic, when investors had access to historically low interest rates. And since, new factors are combining to drive a major shift in the industry: tighter money, changing consumer tastes, and new technologies.
For some working in film and TV, a new era of declining production means career crises and general anxiety. But for the industry as a whole, Adler says—which has “always been volatile, evolving, and changing”—it means early days of transformation and renewal …
Barbara Frye: How big is the problem of production leaving Hollywood?
Getty Images
This article is for members only
Join to read on and have access to The Signal‘s full library.
