Hollywood in Danger of Becoming "The Next Detroit Auto Industry" as Film Productions Flee the State

Hollywood is suffering a well-earned contraction.

The mantra has been "survive until 25."

But 2025 looks like another Grime Milestone.

Lately, creative workers are increasingly chasing their Hollywood dreams in production hubs far from Hollywood. LA continues to hold the lion's share of film and TV jobs in America, but after a long grind of jobs slowly slipping away, the exodus from the city has accelerated in recent years. A recent analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics figures conducted by Patrick Adler and Taner Osman of Westwood Economics & Planning Associates found that the figure was 22% in August, down from about 33% two years earlier.

...

The filmed entertainment industry's center of gravity is shifting further from Hollywood at a time of upheaval. The decadelong shift to streaming was exacerbated by the pandemic, which stalled, then boosted, production as people stayed inside and became couch potatoes. Peak TV came to a halt in 2022 when networks, studios, and streamers couldn't make the financial math for all those new streaming shows work. And filming was shut down once again in 2023 because of the Hollywood actors and writers strikes.

When projects slowly got back on their feet, fewer of them were turning their lights on in LA. FilmLA, which issues permits for production in the region, found that Greater Los Angeles' share of US-produced TV and film projects declined from 23% in 2021 to 18% last year. The number of people employed in the traditional entertainment industry in LA, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hit a 30-year low in June. At the same time, jobs related to video gaming, live events, and the creator economy rose in the city as people's media diet shifted toward social video and away from traditional TV and movies.

That article is from late 2024.

Now some in the industry are warning that LA may see a collapse similar to the one Detroit suffered.

Hollywood At Risk of Becoming the "Next Detroit Auto." L.A. Production Insiders Voice Alarm

As a new tally shows plummeting shoot days in Los Angeles, organizers gathered to strategize on ways to get postproduction and music incentives included in California's bill to boost the industry.

The specter of Los Angeles becoming another Detroit, a city built on a specific industry that became a shell of its former self when that business moved out, loomed over a compelling film and TV industry town hall that tackled not only the calamitous drop in production in Hollywood and California, but also the fight to get the state to increase its entertainment production tax incentive.

The event on Monday night drilled down into a later stage of the entertainment production pipeline that is also currently in crisis: scoring and postproduction.

"This is not hyperbole to say that if we don't act, the California film and TV industry will become the next Detroit auto," said Noelle Stehman, a member of the "Stay in LA" campaign who spoke at the event.

California doesn't want to offer tax breaks to productions -- which other states have used to lure movies to film there, so that Alec Baldwin can satisfy his thirst for killing women -- because they see such incentives as "tax breaks for the rich."

...

"These jobs haven't vanished, they've moved," intoned ProdPro CEO Alex LoVerde, pointing out that the United States has seen a decrease in production of 26 percent since 2022. One beneficiary has been Australia, which has seen a gain of 14 percent.

...

The music and scoring panel was even more sobering. Music contractors and producers Peter Rotter and Jasper Randall, whose Encompass Music Partners hosted the event, pointed out how booked recording days for scoring stages in L.A. have collapsed, from a high during Peak TV in 2022 with 127 days to only a bleak 11 this year so far. They also explained that scoring work costs two-thirds less in Vienna, Austria, and 90 percent less in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Thanks to their own choices, a once-thriving American industry is collapsing. Writing jobs have fallen forty-two percent from last year.

Even with the 2023 strikes in Hollywood's rearview mirror, writers are still feeling the pinch.

On Friday, the Writers Guild of America released new job statistics highlighting recent declines in television-writing jobs across various levels of the hierarchy. Post-Peak TV, those at the peak of profession were the largest casualties (in numbers).

Of the 1,319 fewer TV writer jobs for the 2023-24 season (vs. 2022-23; pre-strikes), 642 jobs were lost -- a decline of 40 percent -- at the co-executive producer or higher (up to showrunner) level. Lower-level writers (staff writer, story editor, executive story editor) were the next most affected with 378 fewer jobs versus the prior season, down 46 percent. Mid-level positions (co-producer through consulting/supervising producer) declined by 299 (-42 percent).

All told, there were 1,819 television writing jobs last season, a 42 percent decline from the 2022-23 season. Last season's numbers are far fewer than even the COVID season of 2019-20, which employed 2,722 writers.

Cord-cutters and corporate greed are to blame, the WGA says.

"With an industry in transition -- cable TV subscriptions and cable programming declining, a massive run-up and then pullback in streaming series as Wall Street demands quicker streaming platform profits -- the number of TV jobs has declined," the WGA's latest jobs report reads.

The report said the "studios' prolonged unwillingness to negotiate a fair deal in 2023" was also to blame as it shortened the 2023-24 TV season.

The strike itself didn't help, you know. The former customers found alternatives.

As usual, this post is just an excuse to pound on Disney.

Marvel is hoping that people will care about their new Thunderbolts* movie, consisting mostly of characters from their bad TV shows.

But the movie is looking at a $70 million opening. Or, $63 million to $77 million.

This is lower than what Captain America made in its opening ($88 million).

Idiot feminist Grace Randolf remarked that Hollywood likes to see the movie that opens the summer season open at $100 million or more, or else it's a "bad sign" for the summer overall.

Marvel's 'Thunderbolts*' Tracking for Fair $70M U.S. Opening

The superhero pic -- introducing a new team of antiheroes and villains to the big screen -- hopes to grow that number by the time it kicks off the summer box office season May 2.

It's a virtual given that the 2025 summer box office will get off to bigger start than last year when Marvel's Thunderbolts* flies into theaters over the first weekend of May. However, the antihero comic book pic still has its work cut out for it.

According to tracking, the tentpole is headed for a domestic debut in the $63 million to $77 million range, with a target number of $70 million. While a fair number in and of itself, that's on the lower end for a Marvel Cinematic Universe title opening in summer.

Disney insiders say there's plenty of room for growth, noting that the film's rag-tag team of antiheroes and villains are making their appearance on the big screen for the first time, so aren't a known property (advance ticket sales, which commenced earlier this week, are on the slower side so far).

...

Disney's well-oiled marketing machine has three weeks left to unleash the heart of the campaign for the movie, which stars Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Hannah John-Kamen and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, among others.

Barely anyone knows who those actors are, or what characters they play.

...

Marvel and Disney are leaning into the creative team's indie roots in selling Thunderbolts* as something other than the usual MCU title. The pic is directed by Jake Schreier, known for the A24-produced Netflix show Beef and 2012's Robot & Frank.

"It ended up becoming this quite badass indie, A24-feeling assassin movie with Marvel superheroes," Pugh told Empire magazine in a recent joint interview with the Thunderbolts* cast and crew.

Sounds like someone's preparing the explanation: "It's a great opening for an A24 independent movie!"

Per Google's AI, long-range predictions for Fantastic Four, which opens July 25th, aren't great.

Long-range projections for "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" (scheduled for July 25, 2025) suggest a potential domestic opening weekend range of $70M-$85M, with some predicting a more modest opening between $35M-$50M. The overall performance is expected to be in the range of $250M-$300M.

That would be a failure. These movies cost at least $200-250 million and that doesn't include marketing and it doesn't take into account that theaters take about half the box office.

Elaboration:

Opening Weekend:

Early projections for "Fantastic Four: First Steps" put the potential domestic opening weekend at $70M-$85M for a three-day weekend and $80M-$95M for a four-day weekend, according to a report from Boxoffice Pro [2]. However, another analysis on a YouTube video suggests a more conservative opening of $35M-$50M, with a potential 250-300 million dollar gross.

The animated Jesus film from Angel Studios is the second-biggest movie in America.

Christian movies are dominating the box office this week, led by the animated hit "The King of Kings," which is backed by the studio behind the controversial 2023 smash "Sound of Freedom" and is being promoted by right-wing influencers on social media, who have billed it as an anti-"woke" movie.

"The King of Kings" finished second behind blockbuster "The Minecraft Movie" at the box office this past weekend with $19.3 million, which is only about $200,000 behind the opening weekend of Angel Studios' "Sound of Freedom."

Four of the top 10 films at the box office this week are faith-based movies, according to Box Office Mojo's latest daily totals, including all three parts of the television series "The Chosen: Last Supper," which distribution company Fathom Entertainment released in theaters.

"The King of Kings" is an animated film featuring a star-studded cast that follows writer Charles Dickens as he teaches his son about the life of Jesus Christ, while "The Chosen: Last Supper" is the fifth season of the historical drama series that depicts Jesus's life.

"The King of Kings" had the biggest box office weekend for a biblical animated film, surpassing the Oscar-winning animated movie "The Prince of Egypt," which earned $14.5 million in its opening weekend in 1998.

Disney-financed Dr. Woke suffered its worst ratings of all time with its latest gay woke episode. Only 1.58 million watched the latest Dr. Who show per overnight ratings, an all-time low.

This follows the first episode of the season, which got the worst-ever ratings for a season's debut episode, at 2.0 million overnight viewers. I think the previous low was 2.6 million (from the previous season).

Also note that the last episode of the prior season received the worst ratings ever for a Dr. Who finale.

I saw someone speculating that Disney encouraged Dr. Who to go as woke as possible so it would absolutely collapse and they could then buy the IP from the BBC at firesale prices. I don't think that's true. Not because Disney isn't a dirty company, but because Disney's reason for encouraging the BBC to go as woke and gay as possible is just their corporate mission statement.

Disney is going to have serious competition for its Orlando park this summer. Universal's Epic Universe opens May 22, and Disney's cutting ticket prices to draw crowds.

Universal Epic Universe opens in Orlando, Florida in 46 days.

The park is currently testing out operations for team members, their families and the media. On Saturday, FOX Business got a sneak peek at the massive attraction that features portals into "five immersive worlds" that offer shopping, dining, new rides and experiences.

Park guests' first portal entry takes them into Celestial Park, also called "the heart of Universal Epic Universe" in a media release. It features gardens with lush foliage, pathways and walkways to bring back the "park" element of a theme park.
...

Universal Destinations and Experiences, a unit of Comcast NBCUniversal, is fourth in the top 10 theme park operators worldwide, according to the 2023 TEA/AECOM Theme Index and Museum Index, which provides some of the most recent data. Disney Experiences is number one, and the two mega-entertainment operators have parks in proximity in central Florida.

The two companies are prepared for a scorching-hot summer of competition, with Disney offering deals on tickets, stays and opening new shows featuring "The Little Mermaid" and "Disney Villains."

Disney is trying to blunt the impact of Epic Universe by offering $99 per night rates at one hotel.

Epic has five different parks. One is all about Nintendo/Mario and related characters, one's about How to Train Your Dragon. Another one is a big (new) Harry Potter ride.

The one that I'm the most interested in is their Universal Monster Park. The animatronics look pretty good. More of Frankenstein here.

If you saw that Jenny Nicholsen video, you may remember that one of her big complaints about Disney's Star Wars park is that they promised free-ranging robots, but delivered none. Well, one, sometimes -- sometimes you can see an R2-D2 rolling around, but she dismissed that, claiming that was just the same remote-controlled R2-D2 they sell in their store, so it's really more of a product demo than an attraction.

But apparently Epic Universe does have free-ranging baby dragons wandering around. (We'll see how long they work for before they start breaking down.)

Under its skin, it's one of those Boston Dynamics dog-bots.

A couple of "Is This Something?" trailers. "Warfare" is getting good reviews. Chris Gore and Alan Ng of Film Threat says it's not political, except in the way every war drama is political -- isn't war terrible? It's about urban combat in, I think, Fallujah.

There's a Japanese samurai movie called 11 Rebels that looks good, too.

Another samurai movie. This one has a Badass Girlboss in the lead, which is just perfectly timing the moment.

posted by Ace at 04:10 PM

| Access Comments