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When actor and filmmaker Mel Gibson grumbled during a recent podcast appearance that it was cheaper to fly his entire U.S.-based crew to Bulgaria for three days than to shoot just one day in California, he echoed the same eulogy sounded across three national outlets. The Wall Street Journal called Los Angeles’ entertainment economy a “disaster movie.” The DailyMail warned that California is “the next Detroit.” And UnHerd columnist Joel Kotkin (a contributing writer to L.A. Times Opinion) noted that L.A. is losing not only its creative workforce but its visitors.
All of that may be true in part, but every obituary of Hollywood misses the same plot twist.
Yes, traditional studio filmmaking is shrinking as tax incentives instituted in other states and countries lure productions away. But Los Angeles is no longer defined by only its soundstages. It’s defined by its talent — and the talent in California is not vanishing; it’s evolving.
Walk through Culver City or Burbank and cranes still fill the skyline, not to build backlots but for construction of new media campuses, post-production labs and tech-meets-storytelling start-ups. The next generation of production companies — digital-first studios, brand-funded entertainment firms, short-form production collectives and podcast networks — is being established here. They may not yet be household names, but their reach is already global.
During the early days of radio and television, announcers often opened shows with lines like “brought to you by Purina” or “presented by Colgate.” Today, that tradition of brand-backed storytelling has evolved into a modern ecosystem of small creative businesses: lean teams producing high-impact series for social platforms, streaming channels and direct-to-brand partnerships like Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign. They hire editors, composers, camera operators and writers, many of the same professionals once employed by legacy studios.
One of the fastest-growing creative spaces in L.A. is immersive and mixed-reality studios, with companies designing fresh experiences that blend physical and virtual spaces through VR, AR, domes, projection mapping and interactive installations. Audiences want experiential storytelling that you can enter, not just watch. Cheaper VR and AR hardware, immersive tools and advanced 3-D software make high-quality work possible.
As Hollywood evolves, there’s growing demand for new formats that bridge tech, story and place. Brands and venues are crafting “Instagram-able” activations to draw people inside and investors are backing the trend, with immersive production companies including Meow Wolf, Illuminarium and Cosm planning venues across Greater Los Angeles.
In 2024, one of the fastest-growing segments of California’s entertainment economy was branded and creator-led storytelling, a sector that didn’t even exist 20 years ago.
The infrastructure of creativity is also shifting. Affordable production technology has liberated a generation of filmmakers from the soundstage. Remote editing, virtual 3-D sets and cloud-based collaboration allow stories to be designed and produced from anywhere, yet California remains the command center — the place where talent converges.
Over the last few years, podcasts have also become a powerful new lane for top talent, offering both creative freedom and significant audience reach. And in that time, the space has exploded to become a serious extension of the entertainment industry.
This is a reminder that L.A. creatives adapt faster than anyone else, constantly reinventing how stories are told and consumed. These innovations are fueled by the city’s mixture of talent, technology and storytelling traditions.
Another truth rarely appears in the gloomy headlines: The world still looks to Los Angeles for cultural leadership. The studios may have competition throughout the world, but the state continues to export its imagination. From animation to gaming, from music videos to YouTube empires, California remains the global heartbeat of storytelling.
Recent comparisons to Detroit misunderstand what makes each city remarkable. The Motor City’s decline was largely due to companies offshoring innovation to cheaper factories abroad. Los Angeles’ challenge is the opposite: an overabundance of innovation that is decentralizing faster than anyone expected. The industry is not dying; it is diversifying.
This moment, uncomfortable as it may be, is exactly what Hollywood needs. Periods of contraction force creative focus. They strip away excess and invite reinvention. The future of entertainment will not be dictated by geography but by imagination, and that is where California has always had a home-field advantage.
Mel Gibson may be right that it is cheaper to film in Bulgaria. But the world doesn’t go to Bulgaria to find talent. Talent still calls California home.
Rachel Zaslansky Sheer and Lori Zuker Briller are the co-authors of the upcoming book “Straight from the Grapevine.”
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Ideas expressed in the piece
The authors contend that Hollywood is undergoing evolution rather than decline, arguing that while traditional studio filmmaking is shrinking due to tax incentives in other jurisdictions, Los Angeles remains defined by its irreplaceable talent pool rather than its physical infrastructure. According to the authors, the entertainment landscape is diversifying with the emergence of digital-first studios, brand-funded entertainment firms, short-form production collectives and podcast networks establishing themselves throughout California. They emphasize that one of the fastest-growing creative sectors in Los Angeles involves immersive and mixed-reality studios designing experiences that blend physical and virtual spaces through VR, AR and interactive installations. The authors note that affordable production technology has liberated filmmakers from traditional soundstages, enabling remote editing and cloud-based collaboration while California remains the central hub where creative talent congregates. They further highlight that branded and creator-led storytelling represented one of California’s fastest-growing entertainment economy segments in 2024, a sector that did not exist two decades ago. The authors argue that periods of contraction force creative focus and invite reinvention, positioning the current moment as necessary for Hollywood’s future. Ultimately, they contend that imagination rather than geography will dictate the entertainment industry’s future, and California maintains an inherent advantage in that domain because talent continues to call the state home.
Different views on the topic
Contrasting perspectives emphasize the severe contraction facing Hollywood’s traditional infrastructure and workforce. Production in Los Angeles has reached one of its lowest points in modern history, with only 24 of 87 scripted projects filmed at least partly in the city during the first quarter of 2025, while 46 percent of all titles began production entirely outside the country[2]. The employment impact has been severe, with motion picture production jobs in Los Angeles County declining from 142,000 to 100,000 in just two years, representing a loss of 42,000 positions[3]. Television production has been particularly devastated, with the region experiencing a 58.4 percent decline in annual shoot days over three years, falling from 18,560 in 2021 to 7,716 in 2024[3]. Beyond domestic challenges, U.S.-produced series premieres declined 27 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2025, with cable programming down more than 50 percent since 2022 and streaming platforms like Netflix reducing series premieres from 41 to 29 in the same period[2]. Stage occupancy in the region dropped sharply to 63 percent in 2024 from the 93 to 95 percent range maintained annually from 2018 to 2021[2]. These observers warn that rising labor and materials costs will continue pushing projects outside California, and they note that the integration of artificial intelligence into filmmaking raises additional concerns about job displacement and the ethical use of AI-generated content[1].
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