Rising Hollywood Costs Push Work Out of L.A., Intensifying Post-Production Shakeout

Soaring production costs, regulatory burdens and comparatively modest state incentives are driving film and television projects away from Los Angeles, weakening the region’s key export industry, The Wall Street Journal reported. Writers, crew and support businesses have already shed an estimated 20,000 jobs between 2022 and 2024, stoking concern that California could follow Detroit’s path of losing a signature sector. Post-production work is leaving as well. Editors on Fox’s survival series “Extracted,” for example, were informed that Season 2 work will move to Canada to qualify for that country’s tax credits. Similar outsourcing has put dozens of U.S. shows on spreadsheets tracking relocations. California lawmakers are advancing legislation to expand the state’s incentive cap to $750 million and create limited bonuses for in-state scoring and visual effects, a package unions say could eventually return about 4,400 jobs—but its impact will not be clear until at least 2027. By contrast, New York ring-fenced $45 million of its $800 million program specifically for post-production. The global squeeze is also reshaping the vendor landscape. Ireland-based Playhouse Studios on Wednesday bought the assets of London’s Lipsync, a 39-year-old post-production house that had entered administration, preserving most of its roughly 70 jobs. The undisclosed deal follows Technicolor’s collapse and underscores how consolidation is emerging as a lifeline for facilities battered by the same cost and strike pressures now pushing work out of Hollywood.