In June, California officially passed its new tax incentives to stop runaway production from the state and from Los Angeles specifically, and today, FilmLA released its first report of the quarter in LA since those incentives were passed.
The bad news is, shoot days in LA were still down in Q3 compared to where they were in 2024, a decline of 13.2 percent compared to July through September this same time last year. The good news is, FilmLA doesn’t seem phased at the dip over the summer just yet, and in fact the organization believes the effects of the passage of AB 1138 are already showing things heading in the right direction.
“We know that it will take a little while for new incentive-backed projects to get underway and be reflected in our data, so we were not surprised to see on-location production continue to slip this summer despite the state’s increased investment,” FilmLA Vice President Philip Sokoloski said in a statement. “Fortunately, we’ve already begun to see early signs of these incentives having their desired effect; we’re excited to be taking calls from productions looking to line up their locations and pull permits.”
In August, the California Film Commission announced that it had approved 22 TV projects to receive its first round of tax credits since Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law the expansion of the program up to $750 million of funds. The CFC said it had seen a 400 percent increase in shows applying for the credit, and that the 22 shows approved would bring in $1.1 billion in spending across California. Some of the shows approved include a new show from Larry David, another from “This Is Us” creator Dan Fogelman, and of course Season 2 of Seth Rogen’s “The Studio,” naturally.
In terms of why FilmLA’s numbers haven’t picked up to match that surge of interest in the program, shows have up to 180 days to begin production after qualifying for the tax credit, so a good chunk of these shows and films approved still haven’t gone into production, or at least not during the July-September quarter.
And the real culprit of decline for FilmLA was commercial production, which gets no tax incentives as part of the film and TV program. Shoot days for commercials were down 17.9 percent in the quarter compared to last year and even down slightly from last quarter. TV production was still down year-over-year, 20.7 percent to be exact. But that dip is after Q2 was way up from 2024 in shoot days, and of the total shoot days in Q3, only 8.8 percent of those were actually tax incentivized, so it stands to reason that there’s much more to come in the near future.
Some of the shows that shot in LA this past quarter, and some of which also qualified for the prior round of credits, include “Dancing with the Stars” (ABC), “The Price is Right,” “The Valley” (Bravo), “Dinner Time Live with David Chang” (Netflix), “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” (Hulu), “9-1-1” S9 (Fox), “Criminal Minds” S19 (CBS), “High Potential” S2 (ABC), “Bel-Air” S4 (Peacock), “Golf” S1 (Netflix), and “Shrinking” S3 (Apple TV).
Feature film production this past quarter was even up compared to last year, but just nominally at 9.7 percent. Roughly 22 percent of those shoot days were already incentivized, and many of them were indie projects. Some of the ones that FilmLA reported shot in Los Angeles this past quarter were Ben Affleck’s “Animals” and Chris Rock’s film “Misty Green” for A24.
“LA’s creative industry is too important to let go without a fight,” Sokoloski added. “As part of our ongoing focus on streamlining and enhancing the on-location filmmaking process, we are convening industry listening sessions and using what we learn to improve our service delivery and recommend actionable process and policy improvements to our valued government partners.”