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 with the same period a year earlier, according to a report released Monday by the nonprofit organization FilmLA, which tracks shoot days in the Greater Los Angeles region.
In the first quarter of 2025, the total number of on-location shoot days on the streets of the L.A. area totaled 5,295, compared with 6,823 during the same period a year ago. A single crew filming at one location during a 24-hour period counts as one shoot day.
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 survey found that the Pacific Palisades and Altadena areas had hosted a little more than 1,400 shoot days over the last four years, making up about 1.3% of all regional filming.
About 545 filming locations were in the burn zones, FilmLA said.
Television production declined by 30.5% in the first quarter compared with 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%.
“California can’t afford to surrender any more work to its competitors,” FilmLA spokesman Philip Sokoloski said in a statement.
The state’s highest-profile industry has been facing headwinds for years. Other states and countries have been luring production from California by offering generous tax breaks and rebates.
The film and TV industry has been squeezed on multiple fronts. First, the pandemic halted production and postproduction work, then the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023 put a halt to most projects and filming.
Though the industry got somewhat of a reprieve during the so-called streaming wars, when studios poured money into developing and producing new movies and shows for their platforms, spending on new shows has slowed amid concerns about profitability. Studios also are releasing few movies.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislators are now calling for improvements to California’s tax credit program to try to lure productions back and increase jobs for local workers.
Last year, Newsom proposed an increase to the program, which would more than double the money allocated annually to incentives to $750 million from its current total of $330 million.
Legislators have proposed dual bills in the Assembly and state Senate that would increase the state’s film tax credit to cover up to 35% of qualified expenditures for movies and TV series shot in the Los Angeles region.