It’s a twist worthy of famed director M. Night Shyamalan — President Donald Trump saves Hollywood, the community that thinks he’s Adolf Hitler (or worse).
President Trump’s national tax credit initiative has real teeth (a 25% federal film-production tax credit) and bipartisan support. The good news for Hollywood might end there.
All the incentives in the world can’t stop LA from being LA, and that’s something not even the real estate mogul-in-chief can change.
Film and TV productions have been fleeing the city for some time now. In 2025, LA experienced the lowest levels of filming on record, continuing a trend that has left locals wondering about the future of Hollywood as an entertainment mecca.
The shows must go on, especially given the crush of streaming channels and old-school channels craving new content. It’s just not happening here. Some crews bundle up and head north to Canada. Others leave North America for more hospitable business climates across the globe.
One director fled to South America to lens a movie set in LA. We’d all be surprised at how many countries can be tweaked to look like American cities. That’s movie magic, and a necessity given LA’s decline.
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New tax credits will help, no doubt, especially for loyal artists eager to keep Hollywood ‘Hollywood.’ Money still matters, and the industry remains addicted to overspending. That means every way to pinch pennies counts.
Some storytellers need that more than others. Consider rom-com darling Nancy Meyers of “The Holiday” and “It’s Complicated” fame. Her latest project arrived with a sticker price of $150 million, a staggering sum blamed on star salaries and, wait for it, an LA-based shoot.
The latter never comes cheaply, an ugly truth that deserves a Hollywood closeup. Consider this comment from a young screenwriter who shared a studio note for one of his projects.
“We need to find a state to shoot this that looks like California, but isn’t California.” For budgetary reasons, naturally.
Veteran movie producer Dallas Sonnier (“Brawl in Cell Block 99,” “Run Hide Fight: Infidels”) echoed that reality.
“This likely federal film tax incentive will not make movies any easier to shoot in California for anyone with a brain. The unions will come after you, bothering productions to no end as they nitpick every detail, even on tiny budgets under $1 million. The permitting process will never get any easier, especially if the useful idiot middle managers don’t like the content of your project.”
Some still cling to the Hollywood of yore, and they’re putting their money where their nostalgia circuits are.
Developer David Simon is bringing a new, $450 million studio to Hollywood, hoping to inject life into the struggling industry. The 10-acre Echelon Studios Hollywood is efficiently structured to make the most of its prime real estate.
Is Simon’s vision a Hollywood fantasy … or will it leverage a possible Trumpian boost?
The recent Mayoral primary results all but scream the former.
Could that change? The recent mayoral primary results all but scream, “no!” Spencer Pratt’s upstart campaign lacked a Hollywood ending, and he seemed the most sincere about making Los Angeles friendlier to local productions.
Heck, Hollywood made him famous in the first place.
Sitting Mayor Karen Bass has talked a good game on the campaign trail, but conditions on the ground suggest otherwise. Why didn’t she do more about the problem over the past four years?
Her challenger, City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, is now the odds-on favorite to become LA’s next mayor. She’s to the left of Mayor Karen Bass, and there’s little hope that the DSA acolyte will correct some of LA’s anti-business posture.
She once blamed car manufacturers, not car thieves, for making it too easy to nick a vehicle. Does that sound like someone capable of fixing LA’s chronic woes — homelessness, crime and high prices — to bring filmmakers back into the fold? She might blame other states luring future projects to their cities, if past is prologue.
She did back Trump’s proposed incentives, but she’d be the first person to reject other Trumpian goals that would make neighborhoods safer for production crews.
LA voters rejected Pratt at the ballot box. The heart of the film and TV industry may pay the price for that, even if President Trump pulls a political rabbit out of his hat on the industry’s behalf.
Christian Toto is the editor of HollywoodinToto.com and host of The Hollywood in Toto Podcast.
The post Why even Trump’s generous bailout won’t save Hollywood appeared first on New York Post.
