How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

How Hollywood Stopped Making Movies in HollywoodThe economics behind where movies are filmed, why Hollywood left Los Angeles, and whether audiences can tell the difference. Daniel ParrisJul 22, 20265866ShareLa La Land (2016). Credit: Warner Bros.Intro: #StayInLAThe past decade has not been kind to Los Angeles’ entertainment industry. The combined shock of the 2023 labor strikes and the 2025 wildfires intensified fears that film and television production is migrating overseas, threatening a fragile ecosystem of below-the-line workers based in Hollywood.In the days after the wildfires, filmmaker Sarah Smith and writer Alexandra Pechman organized a WhatsApp group of showrunners and industry workers, drafted a petition, and launched the grassroots #StayInLA campaign. What began as an emergency effort to help Los Angeles rebuild grew into a broader political movement, drawing more than 20,000 petition signatures, endorsements from prominent actors and filmmakers, and even the fleeting attention of Donald Trump—an actor himself, best known for his performance in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.Having worked in the entertainment industry and lived in Los Angeles, I have long wanted to investigate this often-vague anxiety: to understand exactly where these productions are migrating and quantify the extent of Hollywood’s flight from, well, Hollywood itself.So today, we’ll examine Hollywood’s great production migration, explore how these logistical shifts have reshaped the filmmaking process, and investigate whether outsourcing production has any measurable impact on the quality of the movies themselves.How Hollywood Stopped Making Movies in HollywoodThe American film industry began concentrating in Los Angeles in the 1910s, drawn to the city’s year-round sunshine, varied landscapes, inexpensive land, and distance from Thomas Edison’s patent enforcement on the East Coast. By the 1920s, Hollywood had become the global center of filmmaking, with studios, skilled workers, and supporting businesses clustered together in a self-renewing ecosystem.For decades, most American films were produced on Los Angeles backlots, where studios provided filmmakers access to turnkey sets and skilled crews. This mechanized approach kept costs low and enabled directors to crank out four to six movies a year. During this era, Hollywood operated much like Henry Ford’s Model T assembly line; studios were maniacally focused on speed and frugality. LA’s stranglehold over movie production would ultimately be tested by two filmmaking trends:The rise of the blockbuster: In the 1970s, box-office smashes like The Godfather and Jaws demonstrated the commercial potential of event cinema. By the 1980s, corporatized studios like Paramount-Gulf-Western were actively manufacturing blockbusters, pouring ever-growing budgets into spectacle-driven stories. Films like Predator, First Blood, and Raiders of the Lost Ark were shot on location in jungles, deserts, and other far-flung settings, as exotic locales amplified their sense of scale.The rise of IP and tax credits: The 2000s and 2010s brought a surge in big-budget filmmaking built around familiar IP. Marvel’s vaunted Cinematic Universe and other franchises required considerable financial investment, leading studios to offset costs by relocating production to incentive-rich cities such as Vancouver and Atlanta.The result of these production strategies was a slow-building migration out of Los Angeles and California altogether.So where did all the movies go? Hollywood’s production exodus has benefited a small group of filmmaking hubs offering some combination of established infrastructure and financial incentives. London, for example, boasts world-class facilities such as Pinewood Studios, while cities like Atlanta and Vancouver provide generous tax credits and rebates that reimburse studios for their local spending.The savings these destinations offer are substantial, making them an obvious choice for a superhero movie whose s