As the costs of making movies and TV shows continue to soar, California has found itself last on the list of locations for productions looking to cut costs. But despite this pressure, California’s Attorney General, Rob Bonta, is making it harder for film and TV productions to stay and now he’s even on the verge of chasing Paramount out of the Golden State entirely.
Workers, tens of thousands of them blue-collar, are hardest hit by these political battles. As the industry deteriorates in the state, congresswoman Laura Friedman (D-CA), a former film producer, says employees feel “beaten down,” according to Politico.
Los Angeles County has already lost more than 42,000 film and TV jobs since 2022. Studios, production companies, and filmmakers continue to escape to other states and even other countries to create their entertainment, Politico noted.
Productions have fled the extremely high costs of filming in California and have ended up in Illinois, Louisiana, Georgia, New Mexico, and New York, among a growing list of other U.S. states. Foreign locations are an even greater draw as countries offer huge tax incentives and lower wages, and even fewer union rules in some cases. Countries such as Canada, the UK, Romania, and the Canary Islands have all jumped into the TV and film production game drawing more productions to their shores and away from California.
To combat this massive loss of revenue and jobs, California’s legislature has more than doubled the state’s Film & Television Tax Credit Program to $750 million. But Democrat Gov. Newsom is even working to undermine this credit offer by proposing limitations on the state’s corporate tax credits.
The reality is dire, according to Congresswoman Friedman, who represents entertainment industry workers.
“There is a lot of pessimism right now — a lot of the industry employees feel very beaten down watching the exit of so many productions to other states and also overseas,” said Friedman. “Thousands of people moved across the country and built their lives around the industry in LA. It gives Los Angeles so much of its identity, so much of its history. Watching the very rapid shrinkage of it … just feels overwhelming to a lot of my constituents.”
She added that people are “watching the rug get pulled out from underneath them because the industry has been shrinking and shrinking. And there’s worry that it will collapse. But I believe that we still have a chance to resurrect the industry, to retain it, and to build it out again.”
Worse, after Paramount moved to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, California AG Rob Bonta launched an all-out effort to prevent the merger. The attack on the company sent Paramount chief David Ellison to announce his plan to simply uproot their entire operation and move to Texas or some other state where the machinery of government won’t be aligned to destroy or suffocate the studio.
The radical, left-wing AG is leading a coalition of 12 deep blue states in trying to stop the proposed merger, claiming that the $111 billion plan is detrimental to the entertainment industry and the freedom of choice of consumers.
However, Bonta’s frontal assault on Paramount has even come under fire by some of his fellow Democrats.
Earlier this month, Gov. Newsom urged Bonta to settle his lawfare attempt to stymie the merger and to move on. Newsome is afraid that killing the merger will end up costing the entertainment industry even more jobs.
Bonta also found some opposition from two of the biggest Hollywood unions, the Director’s Guild of America (DGA) and IATSE, both of which urged him to settle his lawsuit against Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros.
“As our members struggle to find employment, the uncertainty surrounding the proposed merger is only making matters worse,” a letter published by the WGA stated. “We are aware of productions that have been put on hold or canceled altogether, leading to further reductions in available work for our members and other industry workers.”
Bonta’s pressure on Paramount has spurred Paramount CEO David Ellison to threaten to move Paramount to a different state as as soon as October 1.
“David Ellison is eager to reach a swift resolution in the antitrust case filed by 12 states seeking to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger,” according to a report. “And, in a move seemingly aimed at gaining leverage in the showdown, he’s prepared to start moving Paramount out of California as soon as October[.]”
Bonta, though, refuses to even sit down to discuss a resolution, Ellison says. Obviously, Bonta’s hoping to kill the merger through inaction, by simply allowing the merger to die as the expense of waiting piles up to an intolerable cost.
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