California’s bid to bring moviemakers back to Hollywood with more incentives is prompting a surge in funding applications and approvals.
The Golden State’s more than doubling of its annual funds for its Film and Television Tax Credit Program — to $750 million from $330 million — in July and adding other enticements sparked a 400% increase in aid requests from the same period during the year prior, according to the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development.
“Incentives have become the rule, rather than the exception, when it comes to business relocation decisions, including those made by Hollywood studio heads,” John Boyd, principal at entertainment consultancy The Boyd Co., told CoStar News. Boyd advises film and television clients on site selection across the country.
The state program has approved 22 television projects in the first round of incentive awards, a 38% jump from the 16 in the same period last year. Additional TV shows are expected to be added to the program in coming months. All told, the approved projects are slated to receive roughly half the $750 million incentive pot, with the remaining half to go to movie projects that have yet to be announced.
For California, the results underscore how tax credits have become critical to keeping productions at home as rival states and countries step up with lucrative packages, and as filming at studio properties scattered throughout the Los Angeles area remains well below pre-pandemic averages.
Film and television production remains a major driver of real estate demand in Los Angeles. Landlords and brokers say the expanded tax credit program is helping refill stages and restore some predictability to a sector that’s been shaken by content pullbacks and development standstills in recent years.
In one example of a recent production move under the expanded program, Netflix, a longtime tenant at Hackman Capital Partners’ Raleigh Studios in Hollywood, plans to relocate comedian Tom Segura’s series “Bad Thoughts” from Texas to Los Angeles.
While the immediate response is promising, there’s no guarantee the incentives will lead to a sustained boost in interest in soundstage occupancy and activity in Los Angeles. The region’s status as the world’s entertainment capital has eroded in recent years as a result of the pandemic, labor strikes and growing global competition.
Between 2017 and 2024, incentive programs — from tax credits to other subsidies — increased 39% across the globe, with a number of cities touting cheaper filming conditions to lure production out of California.
Dollars for dramas
Even so, brokers and other entertainment real estate professionals say steering such projects into Los Angeles facilities is key to stabilizing stage occupancy, which has fallen from more than 90% during the past decade to 63% in 2024.
The new legislation expanding the program raised the credit cap per project from 20% to 35% and, to be on par with other states, allows companies to get reimbursed if they don’t use all the credit, starting in the 2025–26 fiscal year. The state structured this round exclusively for television, with film applicants scheduled for an application window in August.
The California Film Commission ranked submissions based on job creation, qualified spending and commitments to shoot in-state rather than relocating elsewhere. Productions selected are 15 new series, five renewals and two relocations. This includes a new Hulu drama by “This Is Us” series creator Dan Fogelman; HBO’s new Larry David series; CBS Studios’ “NCIS: Origins”; and Sony Pictures Television’s “S.W.A.T. Exiles.”
“This credit allows us to work with the best crews and craftspeople around,” read a statement from Kenya Barris, creator, executive producer and showrunner of a new Hulu pilot called “Group Chat.”
State officials said the shows are expected to generate $1.1 billion in economic activity, including $714 million in qualified expenditures and $413 million in wages, while keeping thousands of crew members and vendors employed. The projects also represent more than 1,100 filming days across the state.
So far, the program is “meeting the challenge of creating jobs and keeping productions here at home,” said Colleen Bell, executive director of the California Film Commission, in a statement. The projects, she noted, will “keep world-class talent and crews here, ensuring California drives the future of storytelling.”
Camera-ready real estate
Nearly all the shows are tied to major Los Angeles studio campuses. Warner Bros. Television anchors activity in Burbank, where the company is finishing up a $500 million renovation of its Warner Bros. Studio Ranch lot at 3701 W. Oak St. The fully leased project will include 16 sound stages and 229,000 square feet of office once completed later this year. Disney operates out of its hub at 500 S. Buena Vista St. in Burbank.
Netflix remains rooted at 5300 Melrose Ave. near Hollywood; Sony Pictures operates out of its Sony Pictures Studios at 10202 Washington Blvd. in Culver City; and CBS Studios runs the Radford Studio Center at 4024 Radford Ave., which owner Hackman is planning to renovate.
Developers are building several billion dollars of new production real estate, from soundstages to offices, across Los Angeles to tempt productions with space more conducive to modern methods of filmmaking than older facilities.
Hackman’s historic Television City studio property in Beverly/Fairfax, which is undergoing a $1 billion expansion and upgrade, has hosted game shows and television hits over the years. Hackman expects to complete the project at 7800 Beverly Blvd. in 2028, before the Olympics.
New studios are underway, too. Echelon Studios, under construction in Hollywood, will be the first purpose-built studio complex in the city in over 20 years. The campus will feature four 18,000-square-foot soundstages with construction expected to finish by mid-2026.
In downtown Los Angeles, East End Studios expects the city council to approve its 675,611-square-foot Arts District LA Campus with 16 soundstages this year.
‘Show me the money’
New incentives and development come as California faces mounting competition from states such as Georgia, New Mexico and Texas, a state that has recently boosted its own tax incentives to draw more media productions. International hubs in Canada and the United Kingdom are also offering deals.
Since 2009, the tax credit program has approved applications from 850 projects, generating more than $27 billion in economic activity, yet about 70% of rejected projects in recent years filmed elsewhere.
“The line ‘Show me the money!’ from the 1996 movie ‘Jerry Maguire’ is a great metaphor for the financial incentives helping to drive the TV and film industry’s migration from Hollywood to distant states and lands,” Boyd said.
On-location filming in Los Angeles was down 6% in the second quarter of 2025 from the year prior, and occupancy at soundstages dipped to 63%.
However, television production activity has been on the rebound across Los Angeles, logging a 17% year-over-year increase in the number of shooting days in the second quarter, according to Film LA. Even with the growth, television production volume is still down 32.6% compared with its five-year quarterly average.