This Sunday will be the biggest night of the year for Los Angeles: Tinseltown’s stars will turn out en masse for the Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, to celebrate the magic that only this storied city can create.
But a look into the field for the Best Picture Oscar reveals an uncomfortable surprise: Not a single one of the 10 nominated movies was produced on the famous soundstages or studio lots of Hollywood. While some post-production was done in L.A.-based facilities, all were entirely or largely filmed elsewhere, from Marty Supreme (New York) to Sinners (Louisiana) to Hamnet (U.K.).
Hollywood, the name for the entertainment industry headquartered and operating in Los Angeles County, is disintegrating. Production measured in Los Angeles shoot days is plunging, down from 36,792 in 2022 to just 19,694 in 2025, according to FilmLA research. Some 41,000 of the workers who make the industry function left from 2022 to 2024, the most recent data available—some by choice, some by necessity. The industry’s most powerful person is not a traditional studio boss but Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of streaming giant Netflix, which is headquartered in Silicon Valley.
And yes, that remains true even after Paramount Skydance’s David Ellison outbid Netflix to purchase the legendary studio Warner Bros. Discovery. Indeed, the outcome of that intensely watched deal negotiation looks likely to be another nail in the coffin for the film industry as a dominant economic force in Los Angeles—with Ellison, Hollywood’s newest mogul, promising to find $6 billion–plus in “synergies” following the acquisition. He has promised that the majority of these cost cuts will affect “nonlabor sources”—but the Town (as the film industry based in Los Angeles is often called) is bracing for large-scale layoffs.
