Film and TV Production In L.A. Was Already Plummeting. Wildfires May Hasten the Exodus
Surfacing from the ashes of Los Angeles’ raging wildfires is a plea from local entertainment industry folk gutted by the blazes: Bring production back to the region.
“One of the biggest things you can do to help our city is to shoot here,” wrote prominent cinematographer and director Rachel Morrison (The Morning Show, The Mandalorian, The Fire Inside) in an Instagram post making the rounds among behind-the-scenes film and TV workers. “We have some of the best crews in the world who need work now more than ever.”
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Morrison’s message speaks to an unprecedented slump in local production. The pandemic came first. Then the strikes. And when it appeared as if filming in Los Angeles had bottomed out and would soon be on the upswing amid an escalating tit-for-tat battle among filming hotspots vying for Hollywood dollars, wildfires fueled by hurricane-force winds battered L.A. The city has seen its share of devastation in earthquakes, fires and civil unrest, but nothing like this in recent memory. Apocalyptic flames fortified by 100 mile per hour gusts destroyed upwards of 12,000 structures built over the course of more than a century in days, ushering in a cloud of uncertainty to a gloomy production landscape yet to recover from back-to-back crises that transformed the economics of Hollywood.
Now, L.A faces a new set of challenges brought by the historic blazes that, if left unabated, may further chip away at its share of filming. Near the top of that list: the possibility that the blazes accelerate a mini migration of the entertainment industry’s workforce away from California.
The degree to which production will be impacted by the number of filmmakers and crewmembers who have been displaced from their homes is unknown. The wildfires ravaged tens of thousands of acres in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, two areas with tight-knit film and TV communities. And while the names of celebrities who have lost residences garnered the most headlines — Mandy Moore, Paris Hilton, Milo Ventimiglia, Jeff Bridges and Billy Crystal to name a few — lesser known are the losses suffered by members of local film and TV crews. Below-the-line union IATSE has estimated that at least 8,000 members have been evacuated or had their homes destroyed; Lindsay Dougherty, Local 399’s top staffer, says her organization’s initial outreach found that at least 25 members saw their homes devoured. An Excel document that has been circulating and lists the GoFundMes of affected crewmembers is now at more than 200 entries.
As crewmembers scatter to relatives’ homes, shelters, rentals, hotels and Airbnbs, production could suffer, at least in the days and months to come. “The fires really did go through a lot of communities that are so central to housing film workers,” says Jason Lester, a music video and commercial director who has worked with Hozier, Phoebe Bridgers and Sabrina Carpenter and works primarily in L.A. “That can’t help but have an effect on the industry, especially in the short term.”
FilmLA president Paul Audley stressed that many workers in Hollywood, as well as ancillary industries, have been “directly affected by this tragedy” and that “many places beloved by nationwide audiences may never return to the screen.”
There are murmurs of a larger exodus. Entertainment workers were already leaving L.A. in response to a slowdown in work over the past few years amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2023 strikes and a larger contraction in the industry. Dutch Merrick, a seasoned armorer and prop master who lost his Altadena home in the Eaton Fire, worries that “many will take flight now, even more so than before the disaster.” While he has not heard of anyone with firm plans to depart the area yet, the ex-president of IATSE Local 44 writes in a text, “Perhaps insurance money will empower otherwise broke film crew to jettison L.A. for cheaper pastures.”
This could be an inflection point, with the fires potentially accelerating the flight of talent and film crew away from L.A. and to other production hubs. After all, why live in L.A., where the median rent is 70 percent higher than the national average, when Georgia has voluminous levels of production and a cheaper cost of living?
Those who stay face a housing market flooded by prospective renters displaced by the fires who are driving up bids. Steven Moritz, a real estate agent in Los Angeles, says he has 50 clients who lost their homes, adding that a house brought on for lease at $7,500 before the fire received multiple offers for double that amount last week (the lease was signed for $8,100 per month). Exacerbating L.A.’s housing crunch are the homeowners in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, some of whom are getting checks from their insurers for temporary housing at the value of their former properties.
“It’s survival of the fittest, pretty much,” Moritz says. “The problem is that there’s such a lack of product. By the time you get there to look, they’re already leased.”
Then there’s the issue of production insurance. Wildfire season in Southern California has typically been June to October. That’s changed, and along with it the risk profile for shooting in certain regions of the state, particularly those buffeted by the Santa Ana winds.
The tail end of 2024 and start of 2025 is an atypical timeframe for major wildfires in Southern California. Wildfire season may simply be year-round now. Expect an increase in insurance premiums and higher deductibles.
“The risk doesn’t have the same temporal limitations anymore,” says Kirk Pasich, an insurance lawyer at McGuireWoods. “So if there’s a production in January or February in an area susceptible to winds, the price will go up.”
Productions that aren’t backed by major studios will be hit the hardest. Studios typically procure insurance on a slate of titles, which equates to lower prices because insurers can spread out their risk across multiple projects in several locations over different times of the year. Independent productions, which spend around 2 percent of their budgets on insurance, do not have that luxury and will likely have to pay more for coverage. And in a filming landscape where every penny is taken into account, the increased cost may mean the difference in getting enough financing.
“I doubt it’s going to be tough to get a policy, but there are going to be higher premiums than you saw before,” says Bryan Sullivan, an entertainment lawyer who handles a variety of business affairs for production companies. “And when you actually make a claim, there may be more pushback on certain obligations you have to take. You may have to find a similar location if there is an evacuation.”
Insurance policies will cover tabs for shutdowns caused by wildfires, but there’s a limit. That’s why banks and financiers that lend money for film and TV projects insist on a completion bond, which effectively acts like another layer of insurance to ensure that productions are able to cross the finish line in case there’s a shortfall. The completion bond industry — already in distress with last year’s bankruptcy of Film Finances, a global leader in film completion guarantees — may collectively decide that certain productions in wildfire-prone areas during high-risk times of the year are no longer bondable.
Also at play: how well-to-do individuals who put millions of dollars into productions a year, mostly into the independent film space, and lost their homes or were otherwise financially impacted by the fires respond to the crisis.
“There are a lot of high-net-worth film financiers who were definitely impacted,” says Elsa Ramo, a lawyer who handles production and distribution for companies such as Fox and Skydance. “Will they leave the L.A. dream or double down?”
Some board members of the Producers Guild of America lost their homes in the fires, according to a person familiar with the situation.
In the wake of the blazes, a brighter spotlight has been put on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to rescue production in L.A. by more than doubling the amount in tax credits given to film and TV productions from $330 million to $750 million per year. Whether productions now opt to shoot in the city at historically comparable levels will largely swing on other changes to the program. Some revisions industry folk have been calling for include broadening the types of expenditures and categories of production that qualify for tax credits, like reality TV, and upping the maximum amount a single title can receive in subsidies. One idiosyncrasy to California’s film and TV tax credit program in particular has been leveraged by competing jurisdictions to coax productions into leaving: It’s the only major film hub to bar any portion of above-the-line costs — like salaries for actors, directors and producers — from qualifying for tax relief.
“It’s about getting the bottom line to a point that’s competitive with other jurisdictions,” says PGA CEO Susan Sprung. “What L.A. has that some of those other places don’t is the best crews and best producers in the world. We have all the infrastructure, so you just have to get budgets close enough to make the argument for why to shoot here.”
Ramo echoes that the overhaul to the tax incentive program must be the "anchor of relief." She adds, "Unless there's government support for why people should shoot here, what's the point of rebuilding in Altadena if production is already on its way out?"
Still, Hollywood has long abided by the maxim requiring that the show must go on, so any doomsaying may be premature. One bright spot has been that the major soundstages that host the majority of TV and movie shoots in LA remain unscathed. Already, several productions that briefly paused due to the wildfires — Max’s Hacks and CBS’ NCIS and NBC’s Suits LA among them — have roared back to life. From Dougherty’s point of view, her members don’t seem to be fleeing any time soon. Responding to a question about whether crew members may leave L.A., she says, “I would say quite the contrary, specifically from the members that have lost their homes in Altadena… I think they're going to want to rebuild their community.”
This story first appeared in the Jan. 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
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