A 'Desperate' Campaign to Bring L.A. Production Back: 'People Can't Live Where There is No Work'
As staggering job losses mount, #StayinLA is pressuring studios, government, Iger and Zaslav, with support from Keanu Reeves, Julie Plec & more
Elaine Low recently broke down the emerging indie TV model for developing new shows and reported on the unscripted market as well as what scripted shows are being bought by HBO and Max, Netflix, Prime Video, NBCU and Peacock, ABC , Disney+ and FX, Apple TV+ and CBS, Paramount+ and Showtime. As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from both Elaine and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including Sean McNulty's The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.
In the wake of the wildfires, love for Los Angeles is at an all-time high. Megastars serenaded the city at FireAid. Studios donated tens of millions to recovery efforts. At its slate presentation last week, Netflix stuffed swag bags with “City of Angels” tees from Homage that will raise money for wildfire relief. Sunday night’s Grammy Awards announced grants from corporations and solicited donations from viewers throughout the show to nonprofits working to heal L.A., and the show also gave over multiple commercial slots to small businesses impacted by the blazes — from a florist to a martial arts studio, with major artists appearing alongside local proprietors.
The city is hurting, and following the quadruple whammy of the pandemic-contraction-strikes-fires, a determined band of Hollywood creatives is asking California officials and the major studios to show L.A. not just the love, but also the money — by driving more production back to town. A burgeoning campaign with the moniker #StayinLA has fueled more than 17,000 people to sign a petition so far, from Bryan Fuller to Keanu Reeves to Julie Plec.
The campaign’s two key goals: uncap the tax incentives for productions that shoot in L.A. County and have studios commit to 10 percent more production in the city over the next three years.
“Before the fires and during the fires, we were talking about: ‘How can we contribute to rebuilding L.A.?’ and this became top of mind,” says director and writer Sarah Adina Smith (Lessons in Chemistry, Hanna), one of #StayinLA’s organizers. “We figured that people can’t continue to live where there is no work, and for L.A. to be able to rebuild itself when it was already hurting so much, the most impactful thing would be to raise awareness on the issue that we need to bring production back here.”
How feasible that will be is a massive question mark when even a show with “L.A.” in the title almost didn’t shoot here.
“If it were up to me, I would shoot everything I ever did here,” says Aaron Korsh, showrunner and exec producer of NBC and Peacock’s hotly anticipated Suits spinoff, Suits: LA. “I live here. The writers all live here. Most of the actors live here. The crews are great here. Why wouldn’t you want to shoot here? It’s really just a matter of cost and the studios’ assessment of how much they’re willing to pay to produce something here.”
The Universal-produced Suits: LA pilot was filmed in Vancouver, despite Korsh’s pleas to keep it in L.A. It wasn’t the first time this happened to Korsh, who created the OG Suits for USA Network and pushed to shoot the 2011 series in New York City, where its story was set. The studio went with the more cost-effective Toronto as a stand-in for NYC, and he wound up pretty pleased with the work they produced. But Vancouver, in his eyes, is “not an excellent match” for L.A.
“It’s an okay match at best,” Korsh says. “But again, for the cost, the studio didn’t want to pay to shoot the pilot here, and we really had to fight very hard to get them to just agree to give us two days here in the pilot.”
When Suits: LA was picked up to series, Korsh grudgingly assumed it would continue to film in Vancouver. But a pleasant surprise came in the form of a $12 million tax credit from the California Film Commission, which was enough for UCP to bring the series back to the Southland. “We were flabbergasted,” Korsh recalls.
“There is zero percent chance we would have been in Los Angeles if those tax credits didn’t exist,” Korsh adds. “So I wish there were more.”
So what would it really take? For this week’s Series Business, I spoke to #StayinLA organizers, production execs and showrunners to understand the realities of producing locally. Here’s what’s inside:
How the #StayinLA campaign is pressuring studios to “create jobs in their own community” and creators to push back against relentless cost-cutting
Which studios, streamers and producers are shooting in the city now (including how many shows from Netflix)
Just how many cast and crew jobs have been lost in recent years (it’s even more than you think)
Why Gov. Gavin Newsom’s tax incentive won’t be enough to turn the tide
The major costs not covered by California’s incentive and why some shows that employ hundreds are ineligible
Quantifiable ideas to make the incentive more impactful for productions
Why even lower-cost unscripted shows are exporting production — and the surprising location of one very American reality competition hit
Why top CEOs like Bob Iger and David Zaslav need to get involved
How shows like The Lincoln Lawyer thread the needle to film in L.A. and put the spotlight on city businesses
The stark decline in production from 2022-2024, by the numbers