“American Idol” is packing up its stars after 25 years in Hollywood.
In the latest blow to Los Angeles film production, ABC’s long-running program will move its upcoming season to the Atlanta area, according to Fremantle, which produces the show with 19 Entertainment, owned by Sony Pictures Television.
Fremantle declined to comment further.
The move comes as Los Angeles’ production levels have tumbled, prompting concern from film workers, union leaders and elected officials who are scrambling to address the crisis. California, despite boosting its tax incentive program, has been struggling to compete against other states that offer more lucrative credits.
TV production activity in the L.A. region was down 27% in the second quarter compared with the same period a year ago, largely because of fewer reality TV shoots, according to the nonprofit FilmLA.
Earlier this year, another broadcast TV stalwart, Fox’s “The Masked Singer,” made plans to vacate its space on the Fox lot on West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles and head to New Jersey, also in search of more lucrative tax credits. Another ABC hit, “Shark Tank,” also is relocating to Atlanta from its longtime home base on Sony’s Culver City lot.
“American Idol” has been a local economic engine since launching on Fox in 2002. For years, the show ranked as the No. 1 show on TV and employed hundreds of workers each season as aspiring singers hoped for their big break.
The most recent season originated from Red Studios in Hollywood.
Georgia offers generous tax incentives, including up to a 30% tax credit for reality television productions that spend at least $500,000 in the state. Unlike California, Georgia’s tax program allows compensation for actors and other so-called above-the-line workers to be included.
Like California, Georgia has been grappling with lower production levels. For more than a decade, its soundstages attracted colossal movie productions, but the region was dealt a blow when the Walt Disney Co. recently shifted production of its Marvel superhero films to facilities near London.
On Tuesday, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, the Motion Picture Assn., industry unions, Hollywood special ambassador Jon Voight and filmmaker Steven Paul made a pitch for a federal film and television tax credit to keep jobs in Hollywood and in the U.S. broadly.
Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) plans to introduce a bill into Congress as early as this month in collaboration with Rep. Brian Jack (R-Ga.), who represents a district southwest of Atlanta. The MPA released a study estimating a federal tax credit could add 143,000 film and TV jobs.
This year, in particular, has seen big swings as the California Film and TV Tax Credit Program expanded eligibility to include competition shows.
Large-scale competition shows are eligible under the state’s incentive program if they have a minimum budget of $1 million per episode. The credit, however, does not include traditional reality shows, game shows, talk shows or docu-follow television programs.
Changes in California’s formula resulted in a jump to 676 shoot days in the second quarter, compared with 463 shoot days during the first three months of the year. Nonetheless, this year’s April-June quarter still reflected an almost 40% decline when compared with the same time last year.
FilmLA said that over the last five years, reality productions have plummeted nearly 63%.
ABC in late July announced “American Idol” was returning, marking its 10th season on the Walt Disney Co. network. Producers are auditioning potential contestants this week during stops in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.
ABC declined to comment on the move.
Ryan Seacrest has long hosted the show, which last season featured Lionel Richie, Luke Bryan and Carrie Underwood, a previous “American Idol” champion, as the celebrity judges.
Deadline first reported the planned move to Georgia.
Game shows are also leaving L.A.
A growing number of programs long based around Hollywood and New York have headed across the ocean to Ireland and Britain to take advantage of tax credits that bring down the cost of production as broadcast network executives contend with shrinking audiences and lower profit margins.
Fox currently has several prime-time game shows produced overseas, including “The Floor,” “Celebrity Name That Tune” and “Beat Shazam.
Staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.
SACRAMENTO — President Trump and the Republican Congress have unintentionally provided California state government with the financial means to subsidize — help save — endangered local news reporting.
Now it’s up to Gov. Gavin Newsom to capitalize on the unanticipated gift.
He can sign or veto legislation to end state tax breaks for large corporations paying top executives $1 million-plus salaries and, instead, provide tax breaks for struggling California news outlets employing local reporters.
The state legislation would conform California law to a little-known provision of Trump’s “Big Beautiful” tax bill that eliminated corporate deductions for execs’ compensation exceeding $1 million.
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I’ll admit to feeling a bit squeamish about this.
First, it’s a conflict of interest, arguing that a governor — whom my colleagues and I write about often — should shovel public dollars into our profession.
Second, why should state government and taxpayers be asked to subsidize a private enterprise that’s flailing in the marketplace? Especially one that prides itself in being an impartial watchdog over government actions and politicians’ behavior. The dog shouldn’t be begging for food from the critters it watches.
OK, but subsidizing local news reporting is investing in democracy. Robust coverage of city halls, school boards, Sacramento politicians and the like is essential for self-government.
And that journalism is in free fall all across America as exploding technology and social media opportunism have altered news consumption, mostly bypassing local communities and often spewing misinformation.
So this legislation, AB 2222 by Assemblyman Christopher Ward (D-San Diego), reaches far beyond just helping the troubled news industry. It’s about more than providing media outlets with financial incentives to retain and hire local reporters. It’s bolstering democracy.
Independent journalism is a pillar of democracy, providing citizens with reliable, fact-based information about how their elected representatives are performing their duties, fulfilling their campaign promises and cozying up to special interests.
You’re not going to glean that information from the politicians. You’re going to get mostly self-serving spin — government propaganda — whether it emanates from the White House, the state Capitol or the local mosquito abatement district.
That’s why the nation’s Founders protected press freedom in the Constitution’s 1st Amendment.
Thomas Jefferson famously wrote: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Of course, that was early in Jefferson’s political career, before he became vice president and later president. He ultimately turned into a harsh press critic. For example: “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.”
Jefferson, like countless politicians ever since, apparently carried a huge chip on his shoulder because of reporting on his job performance that ticked him off.
Newsom is a master at attracting friendly national news coverage, especially on cable TV. But he naturally shudders at more critical coverage by Sacramento beat reporters.
As of this writing, the governor hadn’t publicly disclosed how he feels about the local reporter tax credit bill.
His finance department, which crafts the state budget, opposed the measure when legislators were considering it. The state would “not [be] receiving any incremental economic benefit to justify the expenditure,” its analysis read.
Again, even if that were true, citizens and democracy would benefit.
Also, the analysis contended, the tax credit would likely “provide windfall benefits” for news media owners “rather than encourage new hiring activity.”
That’s not quite accurate. Anyway, it could discourage layoffs and save reporters’ jobs.
Late last week, the McClatchy newspaper chain — owner of the Sacramento Bee and several medium-sized California papers, plus dozens across America — announced massive newsroom layoffs.
Since 2002, more than 12,000 local journalism jobs have been lost in California, according to the bill’s sponsor, the advocacy group Rebuild Local News. More than 3,500 newspapers have closed nationwide.
Many communities have become “news deserts.”
When that happens, fewer citizens turn out to vote, tax money gets spent more carelessly and political corruption increases.
Under the legislation, California media outlets — big and small — would be granted modest tax credits for each employee covering state and local news. There’d be $20,000 for up to five full-time positions and $15,000 for each of the rest. On top of that, there’d be an additional $15,000 for every new full-time job that’s created. Part-timers would be entitled to $7,500.
“National news outlets would be excluded. So would partisan ‘pink slime’ sites controlled by political action committees,” says Matt Pearce, policy director for Rebuild Local News, a former Los Angeles Times reporter and newspaper guild leader.
It would be the most ambitious program of its kind in the country. New York, Illinois and New Mexico currently offer local news subsidies.
“It’s about civic infrastructure and the foundation of democracy. We’re teetering toward autocracy,” says former state Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Orinda), an ex-mayor who has long pushed for stronger local news coverage.
This bill won’t save local newsrooms. But it may give them breathing room while the big thinkers try to concoct a more profitable business model for democracy’s watchdog.
Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison faces a pivotal decision: Should he uproot his Hollywood studio — the birthplace of such film classics as “Sunset Boulevard,” “The Godfather” and “Beverly Hills Cop”?
Paramount floated shifting its home base to Tennessee or Texas in July, hoping to deter California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta from waging a legal battle to block Paramount’s $111-billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Bonta rejected the tactic, calling it “blackmail.” His antitrust lawsuit, filed in collaboration with 11 other Democratic state attorneys general, has since stalled the largest Hollywood merger in decades and put Ellison in a jam.
The 43-year-old tech scion — a film aficionado who has spent two decades building his career in Hollywood — has told associates he doesn’t want to leave L.A. But he has signaled that he’s prepared to sell the historic studio lots and move Paramount’s and Warner Bros.’ operations from California if the merger isn’t finalized by next month, according to people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to comment.
“It would be devastating,” Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, who represents a district that includes the Melrose Avenue movie lot and neighborhoods near Warner Bros. in Burbank, said of a Paramount move. “We need to do everything we can to protect these important jobs in California’s iconic industry.”
Paramount declined to comment.
Ellison is frustrated after securing approvals from more than 65 regulators worldwide for the mammoth merger that would bring HBO, CNN, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV and TBS under the same roof.
“California is the fourth-largest economy in the world and the best place to do business,” a spokesman from Bonta’s office said. “Strong antitrust enforcement is essential so everyone can benefit from a vibrant economy.”
A federal judge in Oakland temporarily blocked the deal, prompting Paramount to agree not to finalize the acquisition until after a trial or June 1, whichever comes first. Settlement talks collapsed in late August after Bonta accused Paramount of leaking and misrepresenting their discussions.
Paramount has plenty at stake. U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín set the trial for March, but the company urgently needs the valuable Warner assets to better compete against tech behemoths. And beginning Oct. 1, Paramount must increase its payout to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders by $7 million a day, so-called ticking fees that will heap more debt onto the highly leveraged transaction.
Paramount asked the judge to require California and other plaintiff states, including Nevada, Oregon and New York, along with the Writers Guild of America (which also sued) to post a $1.88-billion bond that could compensate Paramount for ticking fee costs. A hearing is set for Sept. 24.
For weeks, Paramount’s most potent weapon has been its in-the-works plan to leave L.A.
Lobbying has been intense, prompting a parade of politicians led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and gubernatorial nominee Xavier Becerra to urge the two sides to settle the lawsuit.
“It’s a game of chicken,” Kevin Klowden, an economist and managing director at the Melcene Advisory firm, said in an interview. “But I’m not dismissing the threat because it is very real.”
Relocating from Los Angeles would allow Ellison’s cash-hungry media company to qualify for lucrative tax incentives offered by another state. Ellison’s short list includes Tennessee, Texas and Georgia. But leaving its longtime home would be costly for Paramount too, given how much of the talent and deal-making remains concentrated around L.A.
Tennessee’s Department of Economic and Community Development declined to discuss its negotiations with Paramount, but in a statement a spokesperson said the state “remains committed to working with companies across a wide range of industries that are exploring opportunities to invest and grow in Tennessee.”
Early this month, a pro-merger group was set to hold a news conference outside Paramount, but it moved its gathering to a warehouse a few blocks away after anti-merger activists planned a counterprotest.
The pro-merger organization, Neighbors for Strong Communities, was incorporated in Washington, D.C., in June and has lobbed text messages to Californians urging them to press Bonta to drop the case.
Speakers were concerned with just one issue: What would happen should Paramount pull out?
“What are we going to do with all these people who have invested their lives and many generations into building something here?” asked Keyla Wood, who moved from Mexico to L.A. about a decade ago after getting her start in Spanish-language soap operas.
“It’s been one thing after the other: The pandemic, the strikes and then it was the fires,” said Wood, who has worked as a stand-in for Eva Longoria and Salma Hayek. “So many people never work again.”
David Ellison is deciding whether to leave Hollywood.
(Bloomberg via Getty Images)
L.A.’s very identity is at stake, added Daniela Kelly, an actor and dancer who arrived from Brazil two decades ago.
“Everyone in the world sees Los Angeles and Hollywood as the platform for their dreams,” Kelly said. “Imagine if a huge studio with 100 years of history here just leaves? What will we be?”
Businesses like Kelly’s small Kreashen Studios USA, which provides video and podcasting space in Marina del Rey, depends on the region’s entertainment economy.
“It’s difficult financially right now to keep open,” she said. “So I’m pro having Paramount stay because this is the center, the heart of Hollywood.”
But deal opponents and some experts say the merger would actually worsen L.A.’s already bleak production picture.
Paramount has promised to cut $6 billion in expenses — a figure that doesn’t factor in the cost of ticking fees, which would add $650 million each quarter to the $81 billion that Paramount had anticipated paying Warner shareholders.
“We’ve seen from previous mergers that jobs have been lost,” L.A. City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian said at a City Hall event recently.
“When you look at the economic impact, it’s pretty staggering,” Kelly LoBianco, the department director, said in a recent interview. “An estimated $4 billion in economic output lost, and another $550 million lost in tax revenue at the local, state and federal level.”
The merger also could erase $79 million in tax revenue to Los Angeles County even if Paramount stays in L.A., she said.
But state and county tax revenue would plummet further should Paramount dispatch hundreds of its workers to Tennessee or some other state, Klowden said.
“If Ellison moves all the management out and all of the productions out, you’re talking about potentially tens of thousands of jobs,” Klowden said. “That, bluntly, isn’t just devastating to L.A. That becomes devastating to everybody.”
A report commissioned by Paramount from Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. predicted even steeper losses of at least 28,000 jobs should the studio move its entire operation out of state, according to a draft report given to Politico.
Under a less dire scenario, Paramount could shift its corporate headquarters to another state to qualify for incentives but still maintain large staffs in the creative hubs of Los Angeles and New York, where the company has its legal headquarters.
When the Ellison family acquired Paramount from the Sumner Redstone family last year, Ellison shifted operations to L.A., where he and other key executives work on the Melrose Avenue lot.
The threat to pull up stakes has created a disconnect after Ellison has spent more than a year touting how his family’s growing collection of media properties would strengthen traditional Hollywood.
The relocation campaign echoes a tactic used by software giant Oracle Corp., co-founded by Ellison’s billionaire father, Larry Ellison. For three decades, Oracle thrived in Redwood City, Calif., but in 2020, the company moved its headquarters to Austin, Texas, joining other California tech firms leaving in protest of the state’s high taxes.
The elder Ellison announced in 2024 that Oracle would be moving again, this time to Nashville, although that relocation hasn’t been finalized.
Paramount would risk leaving behind a skilled talent pool filled with experienced production workers and entertainment executives, Klowden said.
Fleeing L.A. could prompt “a talent bleed-out,” Klowden said. “Creative types are like: ‘Would I feel comfortable moving there?’ And, ‘What if I move there and something goes wrong? There would be nowhere else for me to go.’”
He pointed to Nissan’s 2006 U.S. headquarters move to the Nashville area from Gardena in L.A.’s South Bay, which dramatically reset the automaker’s workforce as fewer than half of its Southern California employees made the trek to Tennessee.
On Friday, a magistrate judge told both sides to identify dates in late October to meet for court-ordered settlement talks.
Each has motivations to settle — including avoiding a years-long court fight. Bonta has said Paramount must be willing to part with assets to alleviate market concentration, which could lead to a sale of Warner’s New Line Cinema, which has rights to “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Conjuring” franchises, and potentially cable channels such as CNN, Food Network or Cartoon Network.
Paramount, as part of a settlement, could abandon plans to leave L.A.
“All of the parties need to understand what this [issue] means to workers and small businesses,” Zbur, the local Assembly member, said. “I’m hopeful for a settlement that assures that Paramount and Warner Bros. will maintain their operations and remain a significant economic and employment force in Los Angeles.”
Times staff writer Cerys Davies contributed to this report.
TORONTO — Greetings from the Great White North, where the Toronto International Film Festival rolls to the end of its first weekend.
As packed as our viewing schedules have been, Amy Nicholson notices something lacking at this year’s festival: big Hollywood. In her first critical dispatch, she sees no “Frankenstein” or “Wake Up Dead Man” in the lineup.
Toronto has even resorted to rebooking the under-the-radar smash “Obsession,” the little movie that grew from a 2025 midnight TIFF launch into a global phenomenon.
Director Curry Barker and star Inde Navarrette delighted festgoers who lined up around the block to watch a special conversation.
Cynthia Erivo of the film “Prima Facie,” photographed in the Los Angeles Times Studio at RBC House during the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Cynthia Erivo stunned us in our studio space, looking fierce in a dark ensemble and scary nails. We also saw the likes of the luminous Laura Linney and the dapper Korean cast of “Possible Love.” Click through for more celebrity photos and daily surprises.
It takes thermonuclear moxie to write, direct and star in your debut feature — and cast yourself as the cad. No wonder Jordan Firstman‘s uproarious dramedy “Club Kid” blew away expectations at Cannes and has landed in Toronto ready to shake up awards season.
Firstman plays Peter, an aging New York City party promoter whose scene-y shindigs and subsequent hangovers are starting to feel old.
Enter Arlo (a self-possessed Reggie Absolom) the 9-year-old kid he never knew he had and never fathomed he would have, given that women aren’t his thing (except for that one drug-fueled night with a British girl he barely remembers).
You may think you know where the story is headed and you aren’t entirely wrong, but the route there is a riot. — Amy Nicholson
‘Alpha Gang’
A scene from the movie “Alpha Gang.”
(TIFF)
The latest from filmmaking siblings Nathan and David Zellner rolls into Toronto after having just had its world premiere at Telluride.
Their oddball sensibilities and elastic imagination means that you never quite know what to expect from one of their films and this is no exception: a wholly unpredictable story of an alien invasion told from the aliens’ point-of-view that is inscrutably absurd and touched by a startling romantic fatalism.
Two alien cadres, having assumed the looks of 1950s biker gang members, bicker and fight with one another even as they largely overlook their common enemy, the humans.
The cast is likewise a preposterous mash-up of performers you would not wholly expect to see together, including Cate Blanchett, Kelvin Harrison Jr, Léa Seydoux, Riley Keough, Chris Pine, Dave Bautista and others, making the film’s very existence seem like something dropped from outer space. — Mark Olsen
‘The Spiral’
A scene from the movie “The Spiral.”
(TIFF)
Italian horror is my happy place and this is where I’ll be tonight at midnight, sopping up what many early viewers have already described as stylish and vicious.
Director Paolo Strippoli’s domestic drama got sharp reviews out of Venice; it sounds like a cross between a Bava film and “Parasite.” I’ll investigate. — Joshua Rothkopf
Hollywood’s film and TV post-production workers took their case directly to Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday, urging him to sign a bill that would create the state’s first standalone post-production tax incentive.
Workers such as editors, singers and sound supervisors joined bill author Assemblymember Nick Schultz (D-Burbank) and Mayor Karen Bass at a news conference Thursday morning in front of the Television Academy’s headquarters in North Hollywood.
The bill, AB 2319, is aimed at supporting the industry’s editors, sound mixers, composers and visual effects artists. It passed the state Senate 33 to 5 on Aug. 30, and the Assembly approved the final version 72 to 2 the same day. Newsom, who has not taken a public position on the measure, has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto it.
Bass urged supporters not to let up before then.
“We need our industry in full force,” Bass said. “It’s all a part of making our city more affordable. We know that this is one of the biggest issues in our city, and so having a strong, robust industry helps Angelenos across the board.”
The incentive would allow a 35% to 50% credit on qualified expenses relating specifically to post-production in California. The state’s existing film and TV tax credit program already covers post-production, but only if 75% of filming or the overall budget is spent in the state. The new credit doesn’t require productions to shoot in California.
Even if Newsom signs the bill, the program would start small. Schultz initially proposed $100 million to fund the effort, but the Legislature’s end-of-session budget sets aside $10 million to launch it.
“When you think about production, it’s easy to think about the actors, the directors and the writers; you don’t think about all that happens when the camera stops rolling,” Schultz said. “What’s changed is that they’re now telling their story about the struggles they’re facing.”
For industry veteran Karen Baker Landers, the decline in local post-production work is impossible to overlook. A two-time Oscar-winning supervising sound editor, Baker Landers is vice president of California Post Alliance, the group sponsoring the bill.
“It’s affecting people in huge ways, like losing their health insurance. I get people calling me asking to get just two weeks of work to qualify for coverage,” said Baker Landers. “It’s really difficult.”
Despite the state’s bigger bet on the industry — and this summer’s fight over the cap — L.A. City Councilmember Adrin Nazarian, whose district includes North Hollywood, argued at the press conference that this is the right moment to keep asking for more.
“It’s that exact momentum that we need. When you double down on something, you’re giving more than hope, and you’re saying welcome back. Please come and do your work. Don’t stop doing this,” Nazarian said.
Once upon a time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s mansion was nearly burgled.
Police are looking into the report of an alleged prowler who, “clad in black,” was spotted trespassing at the Oscar-winning director’s Hollywood Hills mansion Wednesday afternoon.
According to law enforcement sources, a call was received about a prowler lurking around the 7400 block of Woodrow Wilson Drive around 12:20 p.m. Responding officers were on the hunt for a 35-year-old man with a thin build wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and black pants (in 100-degree heat).
According to sources familiar with the investigation but not authorized to speak publicly, there were people inside the home when the alleged cat burglar tried to enter a second-story window of the three-story home.
Police told The Times that the suspect had fled by the time officers arrived, but a trespass report was completed.
It is unclear whether Tarantino was home at the time of the incident, and police could not confirm whether the trespasser was successful in their burglary attempt.
This isn’t the first time the “Pulp Fiction” filmmaker has had trouble with home intruders.
Back in 2018, Tarantino reportedly awoke in the middle of the night to find two burglars inside his home. According to TMZ, he confronted the men and they booked it out of the same Hollywood Hills mansion. Although no one was injured, they apparently made off with jewelry and other valuables.
It’s pronounced “human.” Yet writer-director Siân Heder acknowledges that the unusual spelling of the title of her new movie, “Being Heumann,” is something people might give a puzzled second look, unsure of how to say it and possibly dismissing it altogether.
Which, the more she sat with it, made it perfect as the title for a portrait of real-life disability rights activist Judy Heumann, who, while being in a wheelchair, made herself undismissable.
More specifically, the film looks at the pivotal 1977 protest in which Heumann led a group in a 26-day sit-in at a federal office building in San Francisco until the government began enforcing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 — the first federal law that recognized disability as a civil rights category.
“The fact that her last name was ‘human’ has so many beautiful layers of meaning,” says Heder, 49, during a recent interview in Los Angeles. “I think Judy was asking for the world to see disabled people as human beings who were worthy of rights and being looked at and being included.”
A world premiere and the opening-night selection of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which begins on Thursday, “Being Heumann” will hit theaters Nov. 6 and begin streaming on Apple TV Nov. 13. It is also, crucially, Heder’s first film since 2021’s “CODA,” the bittersweet drama about a young woman in a Deaf family (the title is an acronym for “child of Deaf adults”) that won three Academy Awards including adapted screenplay for Heder and best picture.
Actor Ruth Madeley and filmmaker Siân Heder during production on “Being Heumann.”
(Apple TV)
In Heumann, a wheelchair user after contracting polio as a child, Heder found a subject who was in the process of discovering herself as a leader: learning when to hold firm and when to cede ground and empower other people. And for someone who was grappling with the aftermath of unexpected success, that felt familiar.
“I think I was making a movie about myself, honestly,” Heder says. “When you’re moving forward on a massive project or a movement or anything, there’s a necessary drive and ambition and focus that is needed. And if you look at any major change that’s happened in human history, it takes a certain kind of person to push that through. I’m not identifying myself with great leaders of the civil rights movement, but directing a movie is a similar thing.”
Heder is tucked into a quiet corner of a busy coffee shop in L.A.’s Eagle Rock neighborhood, where she has long lived. She is in the process of moving from one historic house to an even older one a few blocks away. Heder didn’t want to disrupt the schooling of her two young children, ages 10 and 12, and has become too enmeshed in the area to want to leave it.
“There’s definitely an element of: ‘She manipulated everyone with that movie. She made us all cry and that’s why she won,’” Heder says of “CODA,” her Oscar-winning best picture. “I was an indie filmmaker that was compelled to tell that story.”
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Community is a word that comes up often over the course of a conversation with Heder, who has a warm manner and a quiet self-possession. Though “CODA” may have brought her wider attention, she was far from a novice by the time she made that film. She won a Peabody Award as a writer on the series “Men of a Certain Age” and was a writer, director and producer on the acclaimed “Orange Is the New Black.” She expanded her 2006 short film “Mother” into her first feature “Tallulah,” about a young woman who takes a baby from a reckless mother and tries to pass it off as her own. It premiered at Sundance in 2016.
Winning the Oscar created changes in her life both big and small. Heder at first kept it on her desk at home, but had to move it because she began to feel the statuette’s crossed arms quietly judging her as she worked. When she drove herself to the Spirit Awards the year after “CODA’s” triumph and spontaneously gave a ride to an afterparty to Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Heder suddenly realized her 10-year-old Subaru wasn’t going to cut it anymore.
“I have a nicer car now,” she says, laughing at the memory. “It’s baby steps.”
The day after the Oscars, Heder recalls that she couldn’t stop crying, all the pressure built up from months of campaigning events and Q&As finally letting itself out.
She says two things changed almost immediately after winning the Oscar. One was a sense of expectation, wanting to make the most of whatever the moment might allow.
“This was not a part of my plans,” she says. “I didn’t ever intend to have so many eyeballs turn to me and go, ’What are you doing now?’”
The second was simply the volume of material and opportunities incoming. Heder says she met with Marvel “so many times” about different projects but none of them felt right. As an independent filmmaker “you’re always pushing against the no,” she puts it, moving projects forward against all odds. But now she felt she had to be the resistance, the one to ask whether something was worthwhile.
“Suddenly there are a lot of voices chiming in too because your reps have an idea of what you should do next and the industry has an idea of what you should do next,” Heder says. “And it was really important for me to center myself back in a feeling of: I’ve always been drawn to stories because they move me. And that hasn’t changed.”
Her Oscars triumph was also the night of the notorious Will Smith-Chris Rock on-stage slap, which overshadowed coverage. Heder is online enough that she knows that some film fans would want an asterisk next to the Oscar wins for “CODA,” as if to note some sort of COVID-era exception for the first film from a streaming service to win Hollywood’s top award.
“There’s definitely an element of: ‘She manipulated everyone with that movie. She made us all cry and that’s why she won,’” Heder says with a edge of defiance. “I was an indie filmmaker that was compelled to tell that story. And then audiences embraced that story and that story took off in a way that was unexpected and surprising even for me.”
Siân Heder holds her Oscar for best adapted screenplay for “CODA” backstage during the Oscars in 2022.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Heder had been developing “Being Heumann” before “CODA” was released. A friend encouraged Heder to see the 2020 documentary “Crip Camp,” which includes Heumann as a subject, and the filmmaker was so struck by that story, she followed up by reading Heumann’s 2020 memoir.
She sent Heumann a cold email expressing interest in the book. As it turned out, Heumann was deciding that very day who should direct a movie of her life. Heumann gave the filmmaker a last-minute chance to pitch herself. After saying she’d cast authentically disabled performers as she did on “CODA,” Heder got the job.
Heder would work for two years on researching and developing the project with Heumann, interviewing dozens of people involved in the actual Carter-era protest. When Heumann died unexpectedly in 2023, Heder did not think she could continue, but it was “Crip Camp” co-director James Lebrecht who convinced her otherwise.
“I think Judy’s death, which was sudden — it made me feel like she had left her legacy in my hands,” remembers Heder.
After developing other scripts post-Oscars that never quite became her next film, Heder eventually found herself in the enviable position of having two projects greenlit at once: “Being Heumann” at Apple and an adaptation of Gabrielle Zevin’s popular novel “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” at Paramount.
As she was trying to make a decision, she went to a meeting with several other directors about the relaunching of the Village Theater in Westwood. She found herself having coffee with Guillermo del Toro and asked him how he decided between potential projects.
“And he said, ‘Make the movie that can’t get made without you,’” she recalls. “And that was very clarifying for me. When you are the element that gets that story told, it takes on an importance and urgency.”
As can often be the case, Del Toro’s advice confirmed what she already felt and she began to move forward with “Being Heumann.” (She is currently prepping “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” so there will not be another five-year gap between releasing films.)
“I was having a rare moment of power in the industry to push something forward,” Heder says, “and it felt like there was a path to go make a big paycheck and have that kind of jump up, or I could use that moment of power and success to try to push through the hardest project I could think of. It was in that moment, after ‘CODA,’ where I really realized: I could make this incredibly difficult movie that no one might make.”
Andrew Pilkington, from left, Siena Rafter, Charlie Rush-Reese, Dylan O’Brien, Roberta Colindrez, Ruth Madeley and Madeline Delp in the movie “Being Heumann.”
(Apple TV)
Following what Heder describes as “the casting Olympics,’ she arrived at BAFTA-nominated actor Ruth Madeley, a wheelchair user, to play the lead role. “Being Heumann” was shot in Toronto, largely on a soundstage built to stand in for the San Francisco federal office building where the sit-in took place.
“Hollywood might be the least accessible industry out there,” Heder notes while beginning to explain the accommodations that needed to be made for a cast that included performers with a wide range of disabilities. Custom-built trailers were created and the set had to be made accessible in ways that a filming location typically is not. An accessibility team oversaw everything, from large-scale logistics to the personal needs of individual background actors.
Rather than a more conventional biopic, Heder wanted to tell the more specific story of the 504 sit-in, building out an ensemble of characters around Heumann.
“I said, “It’s almost like ‘Bad News Bears’ and ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ together,” says Heder. “There’s an underdog-sports-team feeling and bank-heist-gone-wrong.”
But a filmmaker friend asked her: Is making movies about disability now her “thing”? It is a question Heder had already considered.
“Of course it was on my mind if it starts to feel like: Oh, is Siân Heder a social justice warrior who’s just out to try to make these movies that have some kind of message behind them,” she says preemptively. “But I think this is just a great story. Outside of disability, outside of anything else, it is a great story.”
Heder remains interested in stories about outsiders, about class and people generally ignored by or on the fringes of society. And it remains important that she herself feel a part of a larger community in her life and her work.
“My daughter said to me the other day, ‘Mom, I think you’re the right kind of famous because you are important to people who know who you are, but you can still just be in the world and be anonymous.” And I think there’s something true about that.”
Her daughter has obviously inherited Heder’s deep well of empathy, one that is more concerned with bringing new, unseen stories to the screen than with the pursuit of cool points or pure fame.
“‘Earnest’ has become a dirty word,” says Heder. “And what earnest actually means is direct and truthful.”
The exterior of the two-story, beige-colored building looks like any other drab office space near the Hollywood Burbank Airport. But on a recent weekday afternoon, the inside was bustling with activity: hairstylists carried brightly colored wigs between soundstages, a prop artist was building a fake leg for an upcoming video and YouTube stars gathered in a lobby, fidgeting with their phones while they waited to film their next scene.
They were among more than 100 employees of Smosh Productions, which this spring moved into the 32,000-square-foot facility, from a much smaller location in the city, to accommodate their programming needs.
It’s the latest creator-run company deepening its roots in Burbank, a neighborhood long defined by such iconic studios as Disney,Warner Bros. and Universal Pictures.
Other influencer-led companies that have expanded production footprints in the city include Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal’s Mythical Entertainment and Alan Chikin Chow.
“Being ‘Media City’ is a part of Burbank’s tagline. And it’s still true; we are just a different kind of media,” said Katelyn Hempstead, Smosh’s executive coordinator, on a tour of the new facility.
Shoot days for digital productions rose 47% in the second quarter to 661 compared with the same period a year ago — even as the overall number of on-location shoot days dropped 13% during that period, according to FilmLA, the nonprofit group that tracks local filming.
“When people have an opportunity to work for a few days on a vertical series or [when] they make an income out of being an influencer and producing regular content for their various social channels, that does help the economy,” said Philip Sokoloski, a spokesman for FilmLA. “They still purchase things. They still utilize equipment. They may rent things from local supply houses.”
Cameras inside the “Who Meme’d It?” studio at Smosh Studios in Burbank.
(Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)
Burbank has more than 1,000 media and entertainment companies that generate about 66,000 jobs.
Although the city does not give a breakdown of jobs by category, the creator economy has fueled some of the growth in the city’s entertainment employment over the last six years, said Patrick Prescott, Burbank’s community development director.
Most occupy flexible industrial space in the Airport district, leasing space for $1.65 to $2.81 a square foot, he said.
“It’s definitely a transitional period,” Prescott said. “There’s still something really valuable about sitting in a theater with a bunch of other people. But there’s also a lot of scrolling going on. Who’s generating that content? A lot of it’s generated here.”
Filmmakers work in the theater set at Dhar Mann Studios.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Due to anemic production activity, soundstages across L.A. have struggled to fill their studio spaces. That has opened up opportunities for new types of internet productions to fill at least some of the gap, said Sam Glendon, an industrial broker who’s handled several such deals. Creators building out their own space can pick up a discounted soundstage as a result, he said.
“There’s been this big supply-and-demand imbalance,” Glendon said. “It’s still a very niche type of clientele, but I’m certainly searching YouTube much more for who these people are and how many followers they have. Five years ago, I never did that.”
Controlling a studio matters to creators because it lets them move fast without a major studio’s bureaucracy, and platforms such as YouTube reward a steady, frequent posting cadence.
Alan Chikin Chow, behind the scripted YouTube high school drama series “Alan’s Universe,” moved his 13-person operation into a 10,000-square-foot Burbank facility in 2024 after outgrowing his Koreatown apartment.
“YouTube creators are the new trendsetters, and so we wanted to be associated with the big media in Burbank,” said Moris Zingman, the show’s lead producer. Proximity to the Warner Bros. lot helps land celebrity guests, too — Jacob Moncrief, Mythical’s studio president, said it’s an easy sell for shows like “Last Meals” when guests are already a few minutes away.
Filmmakers rehearse a scene in the restaurant set at Dhar Mann Studios.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Traditional media have taken note. Mythical Entertainment and Alan Chikin Chow both struck deals with Netflix in July. “Good Mythical Morning,” “Mythical Kitchen,” “Last Meals” and “Alan’s Universe” are all set to stream there alongside their YouTube releases starting later this year.
Dhar Mann Studios, one of Burbank’s biggest creator-run operations, added a deal with Disney last week for 20 episodes of family-oriented programming — its second major-studio partnership after a 40-title vertical-video deal with Fox Entertainment earlier this year.
Mann, 42, started making YouTube content in 2018 under the Dhar Mann Studios banner, centered around morality and motivational videos. The company now runs a 125,000-square-foot, three-soundstage facility with roughly 220 employees producing rotating sets — restaurants, school hallways, a courtroom, jail visitation rooms — designed to mimic a small town.
But Dhar Mann Studios doesn’t own its Burbank building — it leases the space — and this month the company bought a 108,000-square-foot production campus in Chatsworth for $23 million, with plans to relocate there by 2027, the Real Deal reported.
It’s the same pattern playing out across L.A.’s creator economy.
“The scale that creators have gotten to is ginormous,” said Sean Atkins, Dhar Mann Studios’ chief executive. “Media companies are always looking at what the next thing is. The answer isn’t that they become us or we become them. It’s somewhere in the messy middle, of which nobody knows right now.”
Most internet content work is mostly non-union and typically pays less than traditional film and TV jobs. SAG-AFTRA and the Motion Picture Editors Guild have started drafting new-media-specific contracts in response.
Even so, some workers welcome the opportunity.
Austin Scott, an editor who built a career cutting reality shows like “MasterChef” and “Dancing With the Stars,” recently landed his first big gig after three years of being unable to find post-production work, editing a YouTube series for Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat. Over eight weeks, he’ll work 12-hour days for $3,500 a week — below the $5,000 to $6,000 a typical TV editing job pays.
“My expectations are that it’s going to be harder work, longer hours, more notes, less money,” Scott said. “But there’s no work, so people are kind of forced to take what they can get.”
For years, Hollywood has talked about a federal film and television tax credit that could help the industry combat the growing number of productions fleeing overseas.
This week, the entertainment business got a glimmer of hope.
After more than a year of quiet work from California lawmakers, industry lobbyists and Hollywood unions to build a bipartisan coalition, President Trump endorsed the effort in a post on Truth Social, providing a major boost to the issue.
If passed, a federal incentive is expected to help draw some productions back to the Golden State, industry experts and advocates said. While it probably won’t immediately end Southern California’s production crisis — as many states now have established film hubs stocked with experienced crews and more generous tax breaks — an added federal credit could certainly help make California more competitive, they said.
“I will put our crews and our talent against any talent anywhere in the world,” said Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale), a former producer who has been pushing for a national film tax credit. “If we have a level playing field upon which to shoot, where we are not much more expensive than other locations, productions will come back to Los Angeles.”
Trump’s Truth Social post came after a meeting with actor Jon Voight, one of the president’s designated Hollywood ambassadors who has played a key role in lobbying for the film industry and advocating for a federal tax credit. Though Trump has had frosty relations with Hollywood, particularly since many heavyweights did not support his presidential campaign, the industry’s jobs push aligns with his focus on re-shoring work, marking a rare moment of agreement.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said Wednesday that he has done “a lot of work” in the last week to get something done on federal tax incentives for the film and television industry.
Trump said he has spoken to streaming giant Netflix; Ari Emanuel, chief executive of TKO Group Holdings Inc.; and “many others,” and that he is hopeful there will be a bipartisan push to revive productions in Hollywood with “big subsidies and big credits.”
“We don’t give anything and we should,” Trump said, referring to proposed tax breaks for U.S. productions. He added that he wants legislation to “match” what other countries are offering.
Now, lawmakers must hammer out the details of that legislation.
The bill will have a Republican sponsor from a state known for film and TV production, but Friedman declined to name the person, saying she was waiting for Republicans to make their internal decision about that lead lawmaker.
The bill is likely to go through the House Committee on Ways and Means. While exact provisions are still being negotiated, the expectation is that the credit will be stackable with states’ incentives — similar to how Canada’s tax credit works. A 20% federal tax credit on all labor costs — including for salaries of actors and crew members — is being discussed.
An earlier proposal from Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) had called for a baseline labor-based tax credit of 15% to 20%, in addition to bonus add-ons for indie productions among others, a Schiff spokesperson said.
Schiff has previously noted that 45% of all U.S. films and scripted TV shows were shot internationally last year, up from about 33% in 2022.
Having Schiff and Trump on the same side of this national tax credit is emblematic of the odd bedfellows the effort has gathered.
The Motion Picture Assn. studio lobbying group has released a statement backing the proposal, as have unions such as the Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.
“I am in strong agreement with the President,” Schiff wrote Monday in a post on X. “Congress should immediately take up and pass a federal film tax incentive to bring back these good-paying jobs that we’ve lost to other countries.”
Production incentive experts say any national film tax credit will need to have a seamless process, one with minimal red tape.
One idea is to make the national production incentive an overlay that’s attached to states’ incentives, so the federal government doesn’t need a separate agency to vet the same criteria, which could slow the process, said Peter Marshall, managing principal of media insurance services at Epic, an insurance broker and consultant.
Parameters will also need to be clear, and the program easy to access, said Kathleen Thompson, vice president of tax incentives at payroll service Cast & Crew.
“There is an excitement and an energy and a hopefulness right now from the production community,” she said. “I’ve certainly gotten notes from clients, potential clients and industry colleagues that are very excited about the possibility of this passing and becoming a reality.”
“California is still the leader in production,” said Joe Chianese, senior vice president at Entertainment Partners, which tracks production incentives worldwide. “Producers would like to stay home if they can, but it boils down to the math.”
But even with the improvements to California’s film and TV tax credits, the state’s program still has limitations.
California has an annual funding cap of $750 million, has designated application windows and does allow the cost of actors’ salaries — a major driver of movie budgets — to be counted toward the tax breaks.
Beyond the program, the Golden State is just more expensive than other U.S. locales, and some filmmakers have criticized the red tape that makes shooting in L.A. more difficult.
“Can we be more competitive with a federal incentive? Absolutely,” Thompson said. “Can it completely turn the tide? I don’t know, but I hope so for our industry and our state.”
Industry stakeholders say they are hoping for quick movement on the issue, particularly since it will probably take more than a year after any tax credit is passed for producers to start making plans to move filming back to the U.S. due to lengthy production timelines for movies and TV shows.
“There is a ticking clock,” said Marshall of Epic. “If something isn’t done by the end of the year or in sight, there will be a further solidification of offshoring.”
For Peter Max-Muller, owner of The Ruby, a North Hollywood contemporary clothing rental business, the loss of film and TV shoots in L.A. is one of many threats his business faces, in addition to the use of AI production.
His sales typically mirror the production data from the nonprofit FilmLA, which recorded a 13% drop in shoot days in L.A. County in the second quarter over the same period a year ago.
The goal of a federal incentive, Max-Muller said, “is that we get that runaway production back.”
It’s why Friedman said she is pushing to get the tax credit legislation done as soon as possible.
“The film industry is deep in the identity of Los Angeles,” she said. “And it’s worth saving.”
Staff writer Ana Ceballos contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday urged Congress to approve federal tax incentives aimed at reviving American film and television productions, saying Hollywood has been hollowed out by productions moving to Canada and other countries.
In a social media post, Trump said he met with actor Jon Voight, whom he has designated as “Hollywood Ambassador,” and concluded there is “no incentive” to work in Hollywood anymore and that it is “hurting California very badly.”
“Jon, and many others in the Industry, are suggesting we do Federal Tax Incentives in order to Make our Movie and Television Production Business GREAT AGAIN, Perhaps GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!,” Trump said wrote on Truth Social.
Trump said meetings are already being set up to talk to lawmakers from both parties, noting that he wants to the discussions to be bipartisan, “especially since so much money is being lost in California, and other largely Blue States.”
“I am going to suggest that Republicans and Democrats get together, and immediately craft Legislation to save the Movie, Television and Entertainment Business in America,” he said.
There are few details about what these incentives would look like at this time, but Trump said “the amount of money spent” on tax breaks will be made up “tenfold by the money pouring into the Treasury’s coffers.”
Charles Rivkin, chairman and chief executive of the Motion Picture Assn., applauded Trump’s announcement, and, in a statement, added that “for over a century, American studios, casts, and crews have produced the films and series that the world wants to see.”
“A federal incentive,” Rivkin added, “would be a landmark step toward bringing more production to local communities in all 50 states, strengthening our nation’s economy, and making our country a more competitive place to produce, create, and tell great stories.”
Trump’s push comes as production has continued to shift overseas. Last year, 45% of all U.S. films and scripted television shows were shot internationally, up from about 33% in 2022, an issue that has worried California lawmakers such as Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
California and other states have bolstered their production incentive programs, but Schiff has said in the past that it is not enough. He, too, has made the case for a federal tax credit.
“State programs cannot simply substitute for the kind of global, federal and competitive tax incentives that are needed to bring production back to American soil and stop its offshoring,” Schiff said at an event in March. “The urgency could not be greater.”
Trump has previously floated more aggressive measures, including a threat to impose tariffs on foreign-made films, but that idea did not gain traction.
State lawmakers have approved a series of modest changes intended to bolster California’s film and TV tax credit program.
Among the key revisions, independent filmmakers would be exempted from the $5 million state corporate tax credit cap that was approved earlier this year as part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s state budget.
Film industry advocates lobbied hard for a carve-out, saying the cap would undercut gains made under the current film and TV tax credit program at a time when Hollywood has been reeling from job losses.
The bill includes other changes intended to help Hollywood, such as allowing companies to carry forward older tax credits for up to 15 years (the old limit was nine) and reducing the discount they are charged when they opt to seek a cash refund on unused credits.
Producers will also be able to collect their refund money more quickly — within two years instead of five.
California offers tax credits of up to 35% on qualified expenses, which can be applied to any tax liabilities the production companies have in the state. The program allocates $750 million annually in film and TV tax breaks.
The budget trailer bill was introduced to the Senate on Friday by Assemblyman Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles), chair of the Assembly Democratic Caucus and Senator Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica).
The new cap, issued by Gov. Newsom, would have undermined the “competitiveness” of the current California Film and Television Jobs Program, said the Entertainment Union Coalition, an advocacy group that supports the bill. But with these new modifications, the group — which represents the Directors Guild, SAG-AFTRA, IATSE and more — said the program will be able to continue to “support the fragile recovery of our industry here in California.”
“Most importantly, we want to recognize the major role our members played in today’s success as advocates for their industry in California,” Rebecca Rhine, the coalition’s president, said in a statement. “They sent an unprecedented 450,000 letters to the California legislature, making clear the negative impact that SB 122 [the new cap] would have on their livelihoods, their families, and their communities.”
Over the program’s first full year in its expanded $750-million form, the California Film Commission says it delivered $6.6 billion in direct production spending and $4.3 billion in qualified expenditures, supporting nearly 35,000 cast and crew jobs across 6,630 filming days statewide.
The bill cleared the Assembly floor by a vote of 68-2, with the Senate approving its companion measure by a vote of 32 in favor, 8 against the same day. It now awaits Gov. Newsom’s signature.
“It’s a good day that we took steps to strengthen the program and while we have to do more next year, this was a crucial first step,” Zbur said in an interview.
Zbur said he believes everyone in the state’s film and TV tax credit program should have been exempted from the corporate tax credit cap and he plans to look at that within the context of next year’s budget.
“There were budget implications to doing that, so we really did all the things that are viable to do in this legislative session,” Zbur said.
Imagine a Saturday night “spectacular,” under the stars at the Hollywood Bowl, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic performing as fireworks explode in the night sky — for $10?
Not a pipe dream.
The L.A. Phil has taken a major step in expanding its accessibility. The organization announced this week that it will offer Los Angeles County residents with active Medi-Cal or EBT cards $10 tickets to L.A. Phil performances at the Hollywood Bowl starting with the 2027 season.
It will offer at least 100 of these tickets at each of the orchestra’s Hollywood Bowl concerts. Tickets will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis. The L.A. Phil didn’t say exactly how eligible residents could secure such tickets. It plans to announce that process in Spring 2027 before the season starts.
L.A. Phil Vice President of Community and Government Engagement, Cynthia Fuentes, said in an interview that the organization has been “prioritizing accessibility for a very long time.”
“When you create accessibility programs, they have to be very intentional,” Fuentes said. “Folks are really struggling to make ends meet right now, and for us, it’s so important not only that we create great music on our stages, but that people can afford to see it. Your income levels shouldn’t dictate whether you have access to the arts or not.”
The $10 ticket announcement is the latest move towards making L.A. Phil events more accessible at a time when tickets to see the orchestra at the Hollywood Bowl are, on average, about $48, Fuentes said.
The L.A. Phil has been offering discounted tickets since the 1970s. It now offers more than 50,000 $1 Hollywood Bowl tickets annually — some seats open to the general public and others given out by the L.A. Phil in partnership with the L.A. County Board of Supervisors and L.A. County Parks, to low-income students, senior centers and others in need.
Last year the L.A. Phil boosted the numbers of its $1 tickets from 36,000 to 55,000. It also distributes tens of thousands of free tickets to non-profit organizations through a program called Community Concert Connections.
The L.A. Phil debuted its new accessibility program at the Ford during the venue’s 2026 season. The program is still active at the Ford.
“That was our pilot program for the L.A. Phil, with the intention of implementing it at the Hollywood Bowl,” Fuentes said. “When we started looking into EBT cardholder tickets, [we realized] it happens in a lot of museums but not a lot at performance arts organizations. Partly because it’s a ticketed structure with assigned seats and it’s a more controlled environment. We wanted to build the infrastructure of how you execute it on the back end. The Ford was an incredible way to start the process — do it on a smaller scale, look at what works and then be able to scale up to the bowl.”
The L.A. Phil is in a period of transition. Daniel Harding will step in as the L.A. Phil’s new Music Director, replacing Music & Artistic Director Gustavo Dudamel, starting with the 2027–2028 season. He’ll oversee orchestral programming at Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. Newly appointed Creative Director Esa-Pekka Salonen begins his tenure at the start of the 2026/27 concert season in early October. He’ll conduct and curate subscription concerts and multidisciplinary projects. Anna Handler will serve as conductor in residence for the next three years starting with the 2026/27 season.
“But Gustavo will be back every summer to do a suite of concerts at the Hollywood Bowl and also in December of this year at Walt Disney Concert Hall,” Fuentes said. “He’ll continue to have a presence with the L.A. Phil.”
Operating the Hollywood Bowl is a partnership between the L.A. Phil and the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, whose district includes the Hollywood Bowl, said in a statement that the L.A. Phil has been “a trailblazer in the arts” for more than a century. Their new accessibility initiative, she said, is “that same spirit of innovation and partnership.”
“The Hollywood Bowl is one of Los Angeles County’s most cherished public assets,” Barger said, “and every resident should have the opportunity to experience the joy, inspiration, and sense of community that it offers.”
“But there’s no other L.A. County facility, for performing arts, that we found in our research that had an EBT Program,” Fuentes added. “Part of our goal is to take our findings to the field to share so that other performing arts non-profits follow, especially L.A. County-based [ones], so we can ensure we’re creating accessibility for everyone in the county.”
Fuentes pointed to her own upbringing to illustrate the importance of accessibility programs in the arts.
“I grew up in South Central with working-class parents that had three kids,” she said. “When you don’t have disposable income, you don’t have opportunities [to see arts performances]. Everyone should have the opportunity to go to a show and share a communal experience around music without the fear of not having enough to make your rent or mortgage.”
Hollywood A-listers are more comfortable than ever with cloning their voice and likeness to create a new stream of income, despite the threat of viewer backlash to artificial intelligence.
Sunny Hostin of the popular daily talk show “The View” has licensed her image and likeness to AI production studio Fountain 0, which will make film adaptations of her novels.
“To be able to bring my novels to life in movie and TV form, and actually have my image inserted in the productions, so that audiences can relate to me through my stories beyond my role as an author, is incredibly exciting to me,” Hostin said in a statement.
“AI can give me a way to both more fully develop, and more fully immerse myself in, IP I have developed,” she said.
The Overton window for acceptable AI use in Hollywood continues to widen as Hollywood actors, television hosts, and influencers embrace cloning with protections and compensation. As high-quality synthetic re-creations become cheap and accessible, cloning has become a more desirable option for studios struggling with runaway production costs.
Audiences will be subject to more AI content on the big screen that’s indistinguishable from real human performances.
Fountain 0 is the producer behind “Dreams of Violets,” a fully AI-generated film inspired by anti-government protests in Tehran. The 75-minute drama was made with a budget of $2,000 without a cast or a crew, and was the first fully AI-generated film accepted at the Tribeca Film Festival.
“We are incredibly gratified that Sunny is willing to be the talent pioneer willing to step out and take advantage of this new form of creative expression,” said Ash Koosha, co-founder and CEO of Fountain 0, in a release.
The production company will be releasing its second fully AI-generated film, “Odysseus: The Fall,” later this year. The film uses the likeness of many people, including the film’s creator Koosha, who stars as Odysseus.
Fountain 0’s executive chariman told CNBC that the film is designed to ride the buzz around Christopher Nolan’s ‘’The Odyssey” and give people the opportunity to compare the height of human filmmaking with AI filmmaking.
Proponents of AI argue that it allows writers and creators to take on blockbuster-scale films without financial constraints. Many creators oppose AI because it could replace humans and was built using the unauthorized scraping of creative works used to train generative AI video and image models.
Online reactions to news of Hostin’s cloning were fierce.
“Basically, no film studio wants to give her the budget to turn her books into a movie with real actors, so she’s resorting to AI studios,” wrote one person on Reddit.
Hollywood has fought hard for protections from AI in the prolonged writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing about 160,000 actors and other performers, has been demanding informed consent, fair compensation, more control and transparency over the use of digital replicas.
The latest agreement, signed in June, introduced limits on studios’ use of digital replicas. The contract requires studios to notify actors before using their voices to create a replica. After a project is complete, actors must sign off and be paid the equivalent of an in-person performance if their replica is used.
Additionally, studios need to pay residuals to digital replicas used in reruns, and replicas cannot be used during a strike.
Hiring fully AI-generated characters such as Tilly Norwood, created without hiring a human performer, is not impossible but comes with a very high threshold for use under the 2026 union contract. Producers must notify the union in advance and prove the AI character brings “significant additional value” to the role.
Still, a fissure remains between those actors who stay morally opposed to cloning, and those who embrace this new reality.
ElevenLabs’ voice marketplace features clones of dozens of personalities — including actress Judy Garland, physicist Richard Feynman and popular characters such as Mr. Potato Head for creators to legally license and get compensated for their use.
This has created a contentious ecosystem in which A-listers are gaining millions from cloning with safeguards and building a new stream of passive income from their intellectual property, while early-career actors complain that their likenesses are being misappropriated and opportunities are being driven away. A massive lobbying effort is underway to institute a uniform standard for protecting an individual’s voice and likeness as property rights.
Palos Verdes and Sierra Canyon came away with football victories against teams from Florida on Thursday.
Standout junior safety Jalen Flowers came up with two interceptions, including a one-handed highlight play, to help Palos Verdes hold on for a 21-18 win over Orlando (Fla.) Bishop Moore in an afternoon game at Palos Verdes.
Linebacker Weston Reis also came through for 2-0 Palos Verdes, which travels to Carson next Thursday in another challenging nonleague game.
Sierra Canyon traveled to Florida, lost four fumbles in the first half but came back to defeat Hollywood (Fla.) Chaminade-Madonna 24-7.
Myles Baker had one touchdown pass and one touchdown run as the Trailblazers (2-0) broke open a game that was tied 7-7 at halftime. Jaxsen Stokes’ running, and strong defense from sophomore linebacker Eli Zamorano also helped the Trailblazers. Carter Sobel had a 31-yard field goal in the third quarter to give Sierra Canyon the lead for good.
Nigella Lawson will be joining Paul Hollywood on the upcoming series of Bake Off and now insiders have claimed that their “flirty and fiery” relationship will play out on screen
21:25, 27 Aug 2026Updated 21:26, 27 Aug 2026
Nigella Lawson will be joining Paul Hollywood on the upcoming series of Bake Off(Image: Instagram)
The “flirty and fiery” relationship between Nigella Lawson and Paul Hollywood on The Great British Bake Off will have viewers gripped, according to insiders.
Newly arrived Nigella, who has replaced Dame Prue Leith on the hit show, is not afraid to poke fun at Paul or engage in flirty banter – and he is said to enjoy it. At one point, when they disagree on something, she challenges him to a physical challenge. And another time, when the bakers are toiling over a particular cake, she compares it to his sun-tan.
One insider said: “Paul just loves the attention! He’s met his match with Nigella because she might be new but she’s not afraid to poke fun at him.
She then challenges him to an arm wrestle. And she also makes a joke about a walnut cake being the same colour as him.
“She can come across as seductive and flirty – not just with him, with everyone – but that’s just who she is, she can’t help herself! It’s her trademark. Some of the things she comes out with are so funny. There are some iconic moments.
“The great thing is that Nigella hasn’t changed anything about herself for the show, and the show hasn’t changed anything for her. She’s come along and done her thing and it’s worked wonderfully.
“Their chemistry gives this series a whole different feel which gives it a freshness. Viewers are in for a treat.”
Yesterday Channel 4’s director of content strategy Kiran Nataraja said she was “really excited” to have Nigella on the show. And referring to a report suggesting she’d been dismayed to see Paul arriving on the set in Berkshire using his own personal mode of “showing off” transport, Kiran added: “She and Paul are not arguing about helicopters the whole time.”
In a clip shown at the Edinburgh TV Festival Nigella, 60, is heard telling one contestant: “Don’t let the sugar shout. Let it sing.”
And she tells another: “I like the fact that there is something a bit sort of jumbly about them. A treat to look at and a treat to eat.” Another critique she provides is: “There is nothing wrong in restraint. Restraint is a very good partner to indulge.”
She and Paul are also shown sitting back and relaxing as, for the first time, they are not called upon to set the Technical Challenge – thanks to the newly introduced “audience choice week”.
Paul, 66, previously got on well with both Dame Prue and her predecessor, Dame Mary Berry. The long-running series, presented by Noel Fielding and Alison Hammond, already has a reputation for being packed with saucy innuendoes.
The Great British Bake Off is due to air on Channel 4 next month.
Production services vendor Quixote stunned Hollywood in April when it said it was winding down most of its Los Angeles soundstage business, delivering another blow to an industry already buffeted by steep losses in film and TV production.
Now, one of those facilities is attempting to stage a comeback.
Film and TV producer Manny Halley said he has taken over a 125,000-square-foot former Quixote North Valley complex on Montague Street in Pacoima under a 25-year lease with an option to buy, and plans to reopen it this fall under the name Imani Studio. The land is owned by Rexford Industrial Realty, which is not a party to the production business.
Halley’s credits include the “True to the Game” film trilogy that featured Vivica A. Fox, and the BET reality TV series “Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is,” which ran on BET from 2006 to 2008.
In an interview, Halley declined to disclose the price he paid, but said the lease is worth more than $25 million and that the cost to build the facility three years ago was about $19 million. The deal was financed with capital from his Imani Media Group.
“Right now is a unique time for independent producers because we don’t have to sit back and wait for a studio,” he said. “And in order for us to build a library and keep going, we have to keep costs down. So having your own stage is going to keep costs down.”
Producer Manny Halley has taken over ownership of one of the former Quixote North Valley studio facilities in Pacoima.
(Dae Howerton and Dallas J. Logan)
Halley said he was also motivated by the ongoing production crisis in L.A. and the continued loss of industry jobs. His company has shot 18 productions in California, 14 of which received a state production incentive.
“Somebody’s got to believe in Hollywood,” Halley said. “It’s a sad industry right now, and I want to change it.”
He is making a long bet on a market a much larger company has struggled with. Former owner Hudson Pacific announced it was shutting down most of its L.A. soundstages as well as operations in Atlanta as part of a cost-reduction move.
The Los Angeles-based real estate company bought Quixote in 2022 for $360 million, saying at the time that the acquisition would address the growing demand for soundstage space. Quixote was originally founded in 1995.
Though L.A. area soundstages had average occupancy rates of about 90% from 2016 to 2022, their business plunged in 2023 amid the work stoppages of the writers’ and actors’ strikes, according to data from the nonprofit FilmLA, which tracks on-location shoot days in the Greater L.A. area. In 2024, the average occupancy rate was 63%.
“Keeping production infrastructure active and investing in California’s capacity to support film and television is essential to our long-term competitiveness,” California Film Commission Executive Director Colleen Bell said in a statement. “Facilities like this help keep productions here, sustain good-paying jobs, and support the thousands of businesses and workers that make up our entertainment economy.”
Halley said he plans to invest $2 million to $6 million into the facility, including additional staff and LED volume walls. He retained three employees to help run operations and hopes to hire others who previously worked there.
He said he plans to use the facility, which has four soundstages, to shoot his own shows and movies, but also intends to rent out space to other productions, including student projects.
“I just want to give everybody their opportunity to shine,” he said. “I want to give them their own playing field to create and make their visions come to life with affordable stages.”
But even if outside productions don’t rent the space, he said the facility could sustain itself on his company’s projects. Imani Media Group has a distribution arm that has worked with Amazon, Tubi and the major theater chains.
By late September, Halley said he intends to start shooting a “True to the Game” TV series at the Pacoima facility, as well as the BET comedy “Lot Patrol,” which the network recently picked up for an additional five episodes.
“Supporting Black ownership and entrepreneurship across the entertainment industry remains deeply important to BET,” Brian Rikuda, BET’s executive vice president of enterprise growth strategy, business operations, and programming strategy, said in a statement. “As Manny Halley expands Imani Studios into a 125,000-square-foot production home, we’re proud to continue our partnership rooted in a shared vision to create culturally impactful entertainment and expand opportunity in our industry.”
A prominent Latino group is raising fresh concerns about Paramount Skydance’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying the blockbuster deal would crush Latino workers and small businesses that support Hollywood.
In an open letter to California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the League of United Latin American Citizens urged the state’s top prosecutor to continue his legal fight to block Paramount’s proposed $111-billion takeover of the media company that owns HBO, CNN, HGTV and the Warner Bros. film and television studios.
“No state has more to lose from this disastrous merger … than California,” LULAC National President Roman Palomares and Chief Executive Juan Proaño wrote in the six-page letter sent to Bonta late Sunday.
Thousands of jobs would be lost, and Latino voices could be squelched should the deal go through as it is drawn, the LULAC leaders said.
“The current form of the consolidation would have a devastating and unacceptable impact on Latinos, including those who reside in the Los Angeles community,” they wrote, noting Latinos make up 40% of the state’s population and nearly half of Los Angeles County, where HBO and the Paramount and Warner Bros. studios are based.
Paramount’s proposed merger has carved deep divisions and become increasingly contentious.
In recent days, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Xavier Becerra publicly pressured Bonta to settle the lawsuit to avoid a drawn-out court fight.
Politicians have been reacting to Paramount’s threat to move its studio, and potentially Warner Bros., from Hollywood to Tennessee or Texas unless Bonta backs down.
Theater owners and two major Hollywood unions — the Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — have joined the parade pleading for a settlement. But the Writers Guild of America and Teamsters have steadfastly opposed the merger, warning about its potential impact on working writers and film crews.
Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison was set Monday to meet Bonta and others representing the 12 states that sued to block the transaction. But Bonta abruptly canceled the mediation session, accusing Paramount of “playing games,” leaking details and making misrepresentations about the talks despite agreeing to keep them confidential.
Paramount later denied that it was the source of the leaks.
Paramount didn’t immediately comment on the LULAC letter, but previously has touted the merger as a way to build a stronger competitor amid a pullback in local production. The company said it would “invest $30 billion annually in production and release at least 30 films a year,” a commitment that would lead to “more jobs over time, and ultimately, a stronger, more durable entertainment industry for generations to come.”
“To have it thrown in your face that Paramount will leave Los Angeles if they don’t get what they want is really just tantamount to a threat … one that will be devastating to Latinos,” Proaño said in an interview with The Times.
“There is a significant number of small businesses — Latino small businesses — and Latino residents, employees and workers that support this industry,” Proaño said. “We’ve been invisible, we’ve been silent — but we wanted to make sure that LULAC is not silent in this moment.”
In its letter, LULAC pointed to Hollywood’s most recent mergers, including Discovery’s 2022 acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T, saying such tie-ups underscore how media consolidation tramples over Latino voices, particularly when companies resort to job eliminations and other cost cuts to balance the expense of a corporate takeover.
After Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav took the helm, his company plodded through years of turmoil and massive layoffs. The movie “Batgirl,” which was set to feature a young Afro-Latina as lead actor, was shelved to gain tax benefits. Warner also canceled “Gordita Chronicles,” a TV show about an immigrant Dominican family, despite solid viewership.
Latino families make up “a significant portion of the film and television industry audience,” the letter said, adding that Motion Picture Assn. data show Latinos annually attend more movies per person in theaters than any other demographic group.
“Hollywood returns almost nothing for that loyalty,” the letter said. “Latino characters filled only 5 percent of speaking roles across 1,300 top-grossing films.”
“These and other harms are not collateral to the antitrust case,” LULAC’s letter said. “They are consequences of the diminished competition that will result. Every studio absorbed by a rival is one fewer buyer for a script, one fewer employer for a crew and one fewer distributor willing to bet on a story its franchise slate does not need.”
Warner Bros. Discovery nearly drowned in debt that it took on to finance its $43-billion buyout from AT&T in 2022. Ellison’s proposed Warner Bros. takeover also will be heavily leveraged with nearly twice the debt that resulted from Zaslav’s previous deal.
David Ellison has lined up nearly $80 billion in debt financing to buy out Warner investors. The tech scion is relying on a guarantee from his billionaire father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and $24 billion in equity financing from three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, representing the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.
The deal comes one year after the Ellison family bought Paramount, which had been on the ropes because of significant under-investment over the years.
“Paramount followed the same script: within months of closing its Skydance merger in August 2025, it laid off roughly 2,000 employees, about ten percent of its workforce, just after dismantling its diversity programs earlier that year,” the LULAC letter reads.
“This time, Zaslav’s going to walk away with a billion-dollar parachute and Paramount may end up with these crown jewels assets when it comes to movie-making and television programming,” Proaño said.
It was a television show tailor-made for Los Angeles: a highly anticipated Netflix crime drama about a team of ex-special forces operators who outsource their skills to criminals in the city.
The production was backed by a prominent indie studio and had a critically acclaimed lead actor attached. And with a budget of more than $100 million and a crew of 350, the series seemed like a shoo-in for California’s film tax and TV credit.
But last month, shortly before filming was set to begin, producers were stunned to learn the film didn’t make the cut based on a formula the state uses to rank projects by the number of jobs they produce and their spending levels. After two applications for a tax credit had been rejected, they opted to shoot the series in New Jersey, where it was much easier to qualify for film incentives.
“We were shocked,” said a producer on the project who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. “This is the birthplace of entertainment. It shouldn’t be so hard to shoot here.”
Despite improvements to the state’s tax incentive program, Los Angeles and California continue to struggle to keep movies, television series and even game shows from fleeing elsewhere. Production levels have failed to bounce back since the pandemic and the labor strikes by writers and actors, and they remain at historic lows.
Film activity in the L.A. region plummeted in the second quarter of this year, with shoot days for feature films and TV productions falling 20% and 30%, respectively, compared with already anemic levels from a year ago, according to FilmLA.
The story of how L.A. steadily lost much of its homegrown industry to other locales is a tale of hubris, escalating costs, political inaction and fierce competition from states and countries hungry for a piece of the Hollywood pie. California eventually adopted a very limited film tax credit plan in 2009, but even then production had already gone elsewhere.
Filmmaker Jonathan Nolan, on the set of “Fallout,” has been at the forefront of efforts to keep Hollywood at the center of the entertainment industry.
(Lorenzo Sisti / Prime Video)
This account is based on interviews with more than a dozen producers, studio executives, lawmakers and film industry veterans.
Despite warning signs that runaway production was causing an exodus of talent and jobs, many took for granted that L.A. would remain the epicenter of film and television.
Film activity in Los Angeles has plummeted to historic lows, with devastating consequences for crews and vendors. This series examines how L.A. lost its dominant perch as a film and TV destination and what can be done to bring Hollywood back home.
“I’ve been around long enough … to realize that things kind of die slowly and then they die quickly,” said Jonathan Nolan, a writer, director and producer, whose credits include the HBO series “Westworld” and “Fallout” on Amazon.
Nolan, who championed efforts to get the state to expand its tax incentives, lamented that L.A. once “stood in for everywhere. Now L.A. doesn’t even stand in for itself.”
‘The X-Files’ and the birth of Hollywood North
Like the fall of Rome and the decline of Detroit, Hollywood’s spiral did not happen in a single day, but rather unfolded over decades.
Before World War II, Los Angeles’ production hegemony was uncontested. An abundance of sunny weather and a range of landscapes, along with highly skilled artisans, from set designers to scenic painters, re-created the entire world on Hollywood soundstages and backlots.
That began to change during the late 1940s and early 1950s when studios broke with tradition and filmed abroad, attracted by Europe’s cheap labor and the desire among directors for more realism in movies.
William Wyler’s 1953 classic “Roman Holiday,” starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, was one of the first, shot entirely overseas on the streets of the Italian capital and at Cinecittà studios.
Still, as productions went on location, often for creative reasons, Hollywood remained the center of entertainment gravity.
“Roman Holiday,” starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, was one of the first big American studio films to be shot entirely overseas.
(Paramount Pictures)
In 1993, when there were four broadcast networks, cable TV relied on set-top boxes and streamers were, well, party decorations, a relatively unknown television writer named Chris Carter began pre-production on a new supernatural drama series that he had created.
For the pilot’s opening scenes, he needed a forest, one that was dark and moody. There, a terrified teenage girl would be filmed fleeing before she was consumed by a blinding flash of light and then found dead, bearing unexplained marks on her body.
“It became clear that not only were there not great forests in the ‘zone,’” said Carter, referring to the 30-mile-zone (TMZ) around L.A. that producers try to shoot within to avoid mandatory union surcharges. “But there were better forests in Vancouver.”
As it happened, during the 14-day shoot, Carter, who was working with a tight budget, discovered that Vancouver supplied numerous benefits.
The grim weather naturally provided a spooky atmospheric backdrop while the city “beautifully doubled for almost any place in the U.S. without having to pretend too much,” he said.
Carter’s pilot became “The X-Files,” the wildly popular and groundbreaking 1990s TV series that ran for nine seasons (plus two revival seasons), redefined the science fiction genre and spawned two feature films.
The success of “The X-Files” propelled Vancouver’s reputation as “Hollywood North.”
(Associated Press)
“As David Duchovny said, ‘two weeks became five years,’” quipped Carter.
While other productions such as “Wiseguy” had filmed in British Columbia years earlier, “The X-Files” unintentionally cemented Vancouver’s reputation as “Hollywood North,” fueled by Canada’s favorable exchange rates, skilled crews, lower labor costs and, eventually, tax credits.
The show’s colossal success helped create the model still in play 33 years later for outsourcing movie and television production to regions where tax incentives are higher and production costs are lower.
“It was simply a choice I made for the location, not for the financial benefit,” said Carter. “It wasn’t part of my calculus, but it ended up being a fact of life.”
Throughout the 1990s a steady stream of TV shows and movies shot in Canada. The 1994 adaptation of “Little Women” starring Winona Ryder was largely filmed in Vancouver, with a stand-in for Orchard House, Louisa May Alcott’s home in Concord, Mass., built in a local forest.
But, at the time, few saw what was happening as an existential crisis in the making.
For one thing, L.A. was in the midst of a production boom, prompting the development of the$77-million Manhattan Beach Studios, a 22-acre production facility in 1996. (The studio is now fielding offers by its bank lenders after its owner, the real estate investment firm Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on over $2 billion in mortgages on several studio facilities it had acquired in recent years.)
Losing the ‘golden goose’
Canada’s booming film business inspired other U.S. states to get in on the action. Louisiana became the first to pass a film tax incentive, enhancing it in 2002; New Mexico and Georgia followed with their own programs.
Helping to fuel the film tax credit frenzy was none other than the Motion Picture Assn. The Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group for the major film studios and streamers for years aggressively lobbied lawmakers and even governors in other states to adopt their own film programs.
Eventually, nearly 40 states and some 80 countries and territories were offering film incentives in the form of transferable tax credits, grants or rebates.
“Everybody thought, ‘We are Hollywood. Why do we have to do anything?,’” said Lori Balton, a top location manager, whose list of credits spans nearly 40 years and includes such films as “Heat” and “Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood.”
“They always thought that they had the golden goose. And it was going to keep laying eggs and instead, it packed up its bags and moved.”
Earlier this year, while speaking at Burbank City Hall chambers, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) dropped some sobering data: 45% of all U.S. films and scripted television shows were shot abroad in 2025, up from 33% in 2022.
Like most filmmakers, Miles Millar would prefer to work in Los Angeles, where he lives, but he hasn’t done so for 25 years, since he was a co-producer and writer on the CBS action series “Martial Law.”
“It is not financially viable to shoot the kinds of shows we do here,” said Millar, whose work includes “Smallville” and “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”
It was too expensive to film in Los Angeles, so the Netflix hit “Wednesday” shot its first season in Romania before relocating the show to Ireland.
(Netflix)
When Millar and his “Wednesday” co-creator and co-showrunner Alfred Gough began pre-production on the first season of the Netflix hit series about five years ago, L.A. as a location wasn’t even discussed.
They settled on Romania. Tim Burton, “Wednesday’s” executive producer and primary director, “loved the idea,” said Millar, noting that the director was predisposed to its gloomy and gothic wonders, having once visited Dracula’s castle in a Transylvanian mountain village with rocker Alice Cooper.
“We built the whole town of Jericho and six standing sets at a huge scale. There was no way you could even begin to construct the level and scale of sets that we did, in L.A.,” he said. “We’re talking about the difference of tens of millions of dollars.”
Still, the former Eastern Bloc country had its challenges. The crew didn’t speak English and its promised tax rebates never materialized.
When “Wednesday” was picked up for a second season (it is now filming its third), the show moved to Ireland, where it received more than $23 million in tax credits last year, according to the country’s Tax and Customs office.
“The last thing I want to do is shoot thousands of miles away from my family for nine months, year after year,” Millar said. But it has come down to “where do we get the most bang for the buck?”
Outsourcing scores and VFX
Other critical components of filmmaking, including visual effects and musical scoring, have also been outsourced over several years.
L.A. was once home to 18 film scoring stages that could accommodate full symphony orchestras. Today only three remain, driven away partly by high labor costs and cheaper overseas competition.
Similarly, many visual effects studios have moved elsewhere. Vancouver alone has dozens of visual effects studios, including Sony Pictures Imageworks and a major branch of Industrial Light & Magic.
“We’ve allowed that piece of the market to leave,” said Marielle Abaunza, president of the California Post Alliance, an advocacy group backing a state bill offering post-production firms their own tax breaks, similar to what New York offers.
“For 16 years, places like New York have slowly been building up their talent, their facilities, their relationships with filmmakers and their relationships with studios,” Abaunza said.
Even as other states and foreign governments invested in their own film industries and began luring away productions from California, lawmakers in Sacramento were initially skeptical of giving tax breaks to producers. Some critics saw them as little more than a handout that diverted resources from more pressing needs such as healthcare and education.
“If you’re on the outside looking in, there is this false sense that everyone who works in Hollywood has to be rich whether you’re crew or not,” said Amy Baer, a producer and former Sony executive who now runs Artists Equity, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s production company.
As production losses mounted in L.A., a coalition of labor and industry groups lobbied then governor and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger to take action.
Schwarzenegger, a longtime champion of tax credits, was able to get a program passed as part of an economic stimulus provision of the state’s 2009 budget. It was dubbed “The Ugly Betty” bill, named after the ABC show that had relocated from L.A. to New York.
Though hailed as a significant step, the new film sweeteners had some key limitations. The pool of money was small — capped at $100 million annually over five years. And it couldn’t be applied to offset the cost of actors’ salaries, a key driver of budgets.
In reality, the program was too small and restrictive to compete with a growing crop of rivals that had larger tax breaks and fewer restrictions.
Chief among them was the United Kingdom, which soon began to attract a number of big-budget movies thanks to a hugely popular 25% cash rebate on production expenses, including money spent on actors’ salaries and other above-the-line costs.
In a paradigm-shifting move, Warner Bros. purchased Leavesden Studios outside of London in 2010, investing more than $160 million into the facility. Much of the blockbusters “Wonder Woman” and “Barbie” were filmed there.
Although the California program was tripled to $330 million annually starting in 2014, it did little to halt the continued exodus of film work. Marvel Studios began moving its production operations to Georgia, enticed by the state’s uncapped tax credits that could be used for actors’ salaries. Both “Black Panther” and “Avengers: Infinity War” were filmed largely at Trilith Studios in Fayetteville, Ga. Another historic town east of Atlanta attracted so many movies and TV shows it became known as “Hollywood of the South.” (Last year, Marvel shifted most of its operations to the U.K. in search of even bigger cost savings.)
Marvel Studios, which filmed blockbusters such as “Black Panther” in Georgia, has since shifted operations to the U.K.
(Film Frame / Marvel Studios)
While numerous studio facilities lay empty here, streamers and studios have built major production hubs outside of L.A. Though it still shoots dozens of productions in L.A., Netflix has spent billions to operate production hubs abroad while constructing massive facilities in places like New Jersey and New Mexico.
“Everyone kept saying, if we have more tax credits, then at least we’ll be able to bring production back,” said Monica Levinson, a veteran producer who has worked on FX’s “Love Story” and the movie “Zoolander.” “Well, that didn’t happen. And the crews got better and better out of the country.”
Rising costs
As the rest of the world courted Hollywood, L.A. did little to help itself.
Despite recent improvements to streamline and reduce costs, the city’s film approval system remains a maze of multi-layered permitting, fees and complex logistics, location managers say. The Greater L.A. area has more than 100 jurisdictions, many of which have their own rules, regulations and permitting fees for filming.
Filming in L.A. also has become more expensive compared with other film hubs due in part to higher labor costs and mandatory staffing requirements, such as paid on-set fire safety monitors, and traffic and parking controls.
What’s more, unlike New York, the city doesn’t have its own film commissioner who could advocate for the industry.
An L.A. commissioner would be “somebody that is beating the drum 365 days a year that is not aligned with a special interest other than creating more production in California, which makes our state and our people prosperous,” said Scott Budnick, a producer on the wildly successful “The Hangover” franchise who lobbied for the state’s enhanced film tax credits.
For a time, the loss of market share was masked by a surge in local TV shoots as studios spent heavily to supply content to their new streaming platforms.
But the pandemic and back-to-back strikes by actors and writers roiled the industry. Studios laid off thousands, cut back on films slates and slashed TV spending and it never rebounded. Film incentives became even more critical for those deciding where to shoot.
By the time Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a plan in October 2024 to more than double funding for the film and TV tax credit program, to $750 million annually (closer to New York’s annual allocation of $800 million, although it retained annual caps and doesn’t count actors’ salaries), the industry outlook was bleak.
“I think there was a tipping point between COVID and the strikes that shone a very bright light on the fact that the majority of production had fled the state,” said Baer, the producer.
There are a few bright spots, however.
The critically acclaimed HBO hit medical drama “The Pitt” is filmed almost entirely on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, and has injected tens of millions into the local economy while sustaining nearly 1,000 jobs. Two other Emmy-award winning series, Apple TV’s “The Studio” and HBO’s “Hacks,” which just ended, also shot locally.
At Jonathan Nolan‘s urging, Amazon agreed to relocate his post-apocalyptic series “Fallout” to Los Angeles in 2024 after filming its first season in New York, Utah and Namibia. The show received $67 million in California tax credits for its second and third seasons.
Walton Goggins plays the dual role of Cooper Howard and The Ghoul in Amazon’s post-apocalyptic series “Fallout.”
(Courtesy of Prime Video)
“We want to keep shooting here,” Nolan said. “I don’t want to pack my kids off to the back end of beyond just for the privilege of being able to continue doing what I’m doing.”
To build support for the expanded credits, Nolan last year allowed state lawmakers to visit the sets of “Fallout,” including at the Melody Ranch in Santa Clarita.
“I think they were struck by just how big an endeavor this is,” said Nolan, whose brother Christopher is director of “The Odyssey,” (The epic film was shot across Greece, Sicily and several other countries.) “These are hundreds or thousands of jobs on one production alone, hundreds of millions of dollars being put in the local economy.”
Nolan and others in the industry admit the California program is imperfect.
Mayor Karen Bass, who backed the tax credit program in 2009 when she was speaker of the California Assembly, has touted the success of the expanded incentives, saying they’ve created “thousands of good-paying union jobs … right here in Los Angeles, bringing direct investment to our community.”
Since the expanded program went into effect last July, 179 projects have generated $7.2 billion in direct production spending, bringing nearly 38,000 cast and crew jobs to the state, according to the California Film Commission.
“We remain committed to supporting the entertainment industry here and feel optimistic and energized by the response from the community to the program’s modernization and enhancements,” Colleen Bell, the commission’s executive director, said in a statement.
Bass, who is up for reelection, said she would redouble efforts to remove tax credit caps and further reduce film permitting fees “because this industry is core to the history, culture and economic power of Los Angeles.”
The question, however, is whether L.A. is still core to the film industry.
Earlier this year, writer and director Ryan Coogler, who won an Oscar for his “Sinners” screenplay, began filming the pilot for a reboot of “The X-Files.”
During the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, Coogler called the drama “one of the most beautiful American television shows ever made” and assured fans that while he planned to put his own stamp on the seminal series, his version would pay homage to the original.
“We intend on having both monsters of the week and also the overarching conspiracy,” he said.
And like the original series, it was shot in Vancouver.
Final voting for the 78th Emmys is now underway, which means The Envelope is bidding adieu to the TV awards season — and already gearing up for the film one.
This year, I’ll be in Venice while columnist Glenn Whipp heads to Telluride and movies editor Joshua Rothkopf leads our team at the Toronto International Film Festival. You can catch a daily roundup of our TIFF coverage, including exclusive photo and video highlights from our studio activation, right here in the Envelope Sept. 11-14.
Until then, enjoy highlights from this week’s issue below, and Glenn’s last newsletter of Emmy season on Friday.
Digital cover: Dakota Fanning
(David Urbanke / For The Times)
This week’s digital coverline is inspired by Dakota Fanning’s busy, busy schedule — with two Emmy-nominated shows, a film with sister Elle in the can, an Apple TV thriller in production and more — and, among her many credits, the one fans still bring up to her the most: “Man on Fire.”
“When people ask, ‘Do you even remember doing “Man on Fire”?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, of course I do. What do you mean?’” she tells contributor Kara Warner of Tony Scott’s 2004 thriller, starring Denzel Washington as the bodyguard to Fanning’s 9-year-old kidnapping target. “I think about the memories with Denzel and with Tony, and getting to live in Mexico City for six months when you’re 9 years old is pretty spectacular.”
‘The Comeback’
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
For those of us who’ve been following the peaks and valleys of Valerie Cherish’s career since 2005, the end of “The Comeback” is bittersweet at best: While the series has achieved greatness by adhering to the old showbiz adage “always leave them wanting more,” I’d be happy to visit with the fictional actress for another two decades (or more).
There’s some solace, I suppose, in knowing creators Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King feel the same way. In a moving essay for The Envelope, the pair share how the spirit of Robert Michael Morris, who played Valerie’s friend and hairdresser Mickey in Seasons 1 and 2, aided them during a crucial moment in production on Season 3. RIP, Mickey — and “The Comeback.” You are, and will be, sorely missed.
Viva Las Vegas!
Perhaps even more than Hollywood — and thanks in large part to Hollywood — Las Vegas is subject to cliched depictions in popular culture. But a new wave of Emmy-nominated series are showing a different side of Sin City,” writes contributor Whitney Friedlander.
“The Vegas we wanted to show and explore was Shyanne’s Vegas, which is so specific to her,” “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” director of photography Tari Segal tells Friedlander, referring to Michelle Pfeiffer’s character. “It would have that more aged, timeless quality of downtown Vegas, [and] it would have the income bracket of a Vegas that she would be comfortable in.”
