California and Los Angeles Democrats are willing to do anything to keep Hollywood filming in Los Angeles. Everything, that is, except making it more affordable to do so.Democrats and Hollywood figures are worried that Los Angeles is on the verge of seeing its film industry collapse and usher in an era of decline, as happened with Detroit when automakers moved their industry out of the city. Gov. Gavin Newsom and his almost certain replacement, Xavier Becerra, as well as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and her challenger, Nithya Raman, all recognize that the film industry is dying in Los Angeles.
In fact, Variety published a list of productions for series that used to be filmed in Los Angeles that are now filmed elsewhere. Among them: the reboot of The Rockford Files (now filming in Georgia), the Little House on the Prairie reboot (Canada), the Scrubs reboot (Canada), the sequel to The Social Network (Canada), the 2024 Beetlejuice sequel (United Kingdom), and the sequel to Spaceballs (Australia).
California and Los Angeles Democrats want more special privileges and more federal help to fix their mistakes. That includes both state and local tax incentives (for the billion-dollar film studios) and a desired federal incentive being pushed by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), which would stack on the local incentives. What this ignores, though, is that California and Los Angeles are primarily responsible for the hollowing out of their own film industry because they have regulated it to death.
