L.A. Production Plunged 20% In 2023, New FilmLA Report Finds

Partly because of the dual strikes and partly for larger industry shifts, film and TV production in Greater L.A. plunged almost 20% in 2023, a new report from FilmLA finds.

The organization, which advances the production interests of the city and county of L.A., published an update of its three-year analysis of U.S.-produced, first-run, English-language scripted projects. (Read it HERE.) It found that production fell 19.7% to just 183 projects last year. The total was 45 fewer projects than Greater Los Angeles captured the year prior, and only a fraction of the 990 total projects captured by all jurisdictions in 2023.The UK, Georgia and Ontario, Canada were cited by FilmLA as particular threats in the production sector.

Greater Los Angeles went from capturing nearly 23% of qualified projects in 2021 to 22% in 2022, and just 18% share in 2023.

As Deadline has documented, the toll exacted by the strikes has been exacerbated by widespread cost cuts by major media companies and a pullback in some areas by major streamers.

“The entertainment industry feeds around $43 billion in wages into the state economy,” FilmLA President Paul Audley said. “But how long can California subsist – or help businesses and families thrive — on an ever-thinner slice of a shrinking production pie?”

Over the last 30 years, rival jurisdictions have offered lavish financial incentives and made significant infrastructure investments to win over film producers. The losers, FilmLA noted, are rank and file industry workers. According to the 2024 Otis College Report on the Creative Economy, 27% of the nation’s domestic film and TV workforce resides in Greater Los Angeles. Given these workers’ heavy dependence on local filmmaking, reduced project output raises significant concerns.

Audley is demanding a “vast expansion” of the California Film & Television Tax Credit Program, as a way of boosting local investment. Gov. Gavin Newsom has rebuffed industry efforts to sweeten the state’s tax incentive program.

“We’re now at a place where inadequate investment in this industry places other economic supports at risk,” he said. “For each film industry supplier that closes his or her doors due to lack of steady work – those entrepreneurs no longer employ people, generate sales taxes or pay rent. Their former employees, lacking an income, then have no money for groceries, tuition and bills. When local industries decline the effects can be far ranging, so this is definitely a problem California needs to address.”

The latest findings underscore “the challenges facing our entertainment industry, not just in Los Angeles County but elsewhere in the nation and globe,” Kelly LoBianco, Director of the Department of Economic Opportunity. “These last two years have been devastating to all the workers and businesses in the County due to the labor strikes of 2023, advancing and ever-changing technology, recovery from the pandemic, and other factors.”

The report “validates the lived experience of grips, camera operators, caterers, and various essential small business owners over the last two years,” said Lindsey P. Horvath, Chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. “Our community members’ livelihoods are on the line, which is why Los Angeles County launched the Entertainment Business Interruption Fund, and we continue to explore ways to incentivize local production. FilmLA’s report underscores the urgent work required to save an industry critical to our local economy and identity as Angelenos.”

Erik Pedersen contributed to this report.