Los Angeles does not have a soundstage problem. It has a production problem. And the two are not the same.
Right now, new soundstages are being built across Los Angeles while existing studios sit partially empty or completely idle. That disconnect has become a kind of theater. Ribbon cuttings. Press releases. Promises about “infrastructure.” Meanwhile, the crews, writers, directors, and producers who built this industry are watching work disappear every day while already starving from little to no work since the pandemic. That’s five years!
The reason is not mysterious. It is not complicated. And it has almost nothing to do with permitting. The real mistake happened way over a decade ago.
Los Angeles began losing production when California failed to adapt its tax credit at the moment it mattered most. Other regions saw film and television production for what it is: an export industry. One that brings outside money into the local economy, supports middle class labor, and creates long term ecosystems.
Georgia, New Mexico, Louisiana, Canada, and the UK did not dabble. They committed.
They offered:
– Predictable, scalable tax incentives
– Multi year certainty
– Credits that worked for episodic television, not just features
– Clear, stable rules that producers could plan around
California hesitated. It capped. It slow walked. It underfunded. It treated the incentive like a favor instead of an economic tool.
By the time the state expanded the program, the damage was already done. Once episodic TV leaves, it does not come back easily. Feature films are mobile. Television series are not.
Once a show relocates, it locks in standing sets, long term leases, local crew bases, vendor relationships, housing patterns, and political leverage. That is why the loss of episodic production hit Los Angeles so hard and why it still has not recovered.
Those empty stages are not evidence of unused potential. They are evidence of work that left and built permanent roots somewhere else. More stages do not create demand! This is the fundamental misunderstanding behind current talking points. Stages follow productions. Productions do not follow stages.
Los Angeles already has: World class crews, deep talent pools, decades of institutional knowledge and plenty of existing infrastructure (Have you been to a studio lot lately- they are ghost towns!)
What it lacks is a financial reason for productions to stay. When officials talk about easing permits or speeding up approvals, they are addressing friction, not economics. Friction is annoying. Economics are decisive. No studio executive greenlights a hundred million dollar project and says, “Let’s shoot in LA because permitting is smoother now.” They ask one question: where can we save twenty to thirty percent with certainty and minimal risk?
Right now, California is rarely the answer. Where the political narrative falls apart…when Karen Bass talks about infrastructure and permitting as the solution, it sidesteps the actual math driving production decisions. Permitting delays do not move productions out of state.
Tax incentives do. PERIOD.
Infrastructure does not bring productions back. Economics do. PERIOD.
Building more stages while productions are leaving is like opening more restaurants in a city where no one can afford to eat out. Supply without demand is not strategy. It is denial. The uncomfortable truth: Los Angeles is no longer competing with Atlanta or Vancouver or London. It is competing with its own legacy cost structure.
Unless California dramatically expands the tax credit, removes artificial caps and lotteries, guarantees multi year certainty, and makes the incentive usable for mid budget and independent productions…then infrastructure announcements are just noise.
Hollywood does not need more empty stages. It needs productions. At every level of budget. Annnnnnnd…PERIOD.
Until the state and city align policy with reality, Los Angeles will continue to look like a film capital with the lights on and the cameras gone. And no amount of ribbon cutting will change that.
Good night and good luck.
"I’ve had the most wonderful mentors and I’m super grateful that I had the right people championing me along the way." - Tamela D'Amico-
