Production of television shows, feature films and commercials all declined in the Los Angeles area during the first three months of the year, according to a new report.
On-location production declined 22.4% compared to the same time period a year earlier, according to a report released Monday by the nonprofit organization FilmLA, which tracks shoot days in the Greater L.A. region.
The total number of on-location shoot days for the first quarter of 2025 was 5,295, compared to 6,823 last year.
Though the Southern California wildfires in January temporarily halted productions, forced entertainment industry workers to flee their homes and left many without a house to return to, the report found that the fires did not have a lasting effect on production.
The report found that the Pacific Palisades and Altadena areas had hosted a little over 1,400 filming days over the last four years, making up about 1.3% of all regional filming.
About 545 filming locations were located in the burn zones, FilmLA said.
Television production declined by 30.5% in the first quarter compared to the previous year. All categories of TV production were down, including dramas (38.9%), comedies (29.9%), reality shows (26.4%) and pilots (80.3%).
Feature film production decreased by 28.9%, while commercials were down by 2.1%.
The report’s “other” category, which includes smaller and lower-cost shoots such as student productions, still photography, documentaries and music and industrial videos, also took a hit, dropping about 20% compared to last year.
“California can’t afford to surrender any more work to its competitors,” FilmLA spokesman Philip Sokoloski said in a statement.
As other states and countries have sweetened their film and TV tax credit programs, productions have increasingly moved out of the Golden State.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislators are calling for improvements to California’s program to try to lure those productions back and increase jobs for local workers.
Last year, Newsom proposed an increase to the state’s program, which would more than double the money allocated annually to incentives. California legislators have proposed dual bills in the Assembly and state Senate that would increase its film tax credit to cover up to 35% of qualified expenditures for movies and TV series shot in the Los Angeles region.
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