A Production Recovery Plan for California: What the Next Governor Must Do to Bring Hollywood Back
By Jimmy Swinder
California’s film and television production crisis is no longer a temporary slowdown, a post-pandemic correction, or a narrow entertainment-industry concern. It is a structural competitiveness problem affecting middle-class jobs, small businesses, state revenue, local economies, cultural influence, and California’s long-term position as the global center of entertainment production. Runaway production, rising costs, fragmented permitting, aggressive tax incentives from competing states and countries, artificial intelligence, media consolidation, and the contraction of the streaming boom have created an urgent policy challenge. The next Governor of California should not treat Hollywood as a symbolic asset that can be protected through rhetoric. The state needs a governing architecture: a 100-day Hollywood Production Recovery Order, a California Production Competitiveness Act, a cabinet-level Production Recovery Director, a redesigned film and television tax credit program, a statewide permitting compact, targeted workforce retention, production vendor stabilization, responsible artificial intelligence policy, federal partnership, and a public accountability dashboard. California does not need to be the cheapest place in the world to produce. It needs to be close enough on cost, superior on execution, and unmatched in talent, infrastructure, speed, and reliability. This paper argues that bringing Hollywood back means making California the smartest business decision for production again.
Executive Summary
The next Governor of California should treat the Hollywood production crisis as an economic-development emergency and a cultural-infrastructure challenge. The state should act within the first 100 days through an executive order creating a statewide Hollywood Production Recovery initiative. That order should appoint a cabinet-level Production Recovery Director, require interagency coordination, establish a production permitting task force, direct the California Film Commission to identify tax credit improvements, and begin development of a public Production Recovery Dashboard.
Within the first legislative year, the governor should introduce a California Production Competitiveness Act. The act should redesign the California Film and Television Tax Credit Program around speed, usability, accountability, and workforce retention. It should create rolling applications, fast conditional certification, stronger transferability or partial refundability, protected allocations for independent and mid-budget productions, expanded eligibility for post-production and visual effects, and a temporary Production Return Bonus through the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
The state should also create “One Permit California,” a statewide film permitting compact establishing standard categories, uniform approval timelines, clear fee ranges, low-impact shoot approvals, drone and night-shoot protocols, and an escalation process when agencies delay qualified productions. California should pair this with a Production Vendor Stabilization Fund, an Entertainment Workforce Corps, responsible AI protections, independent-production financing support, and a federal-state strategy to compete against international production incentives.
The governing principle should be direct: make staying in California the smartest decision. Not the sentimental decision. Not the nostalgic decision. The smartest decision.
Introduction: California Has an Execution Problem
California does not have a Hollywood problem. It has an execution problem.
The state still has the workers, stages, studios, unions, vendors, locations, post-production infrastructure, creative institutions, film schools, technical talent, and global brand that built the modern entertainment industry. What it no longer has is the luxury of assuming those advantages are permanent. For much of the twentieth century, California could afford to be expensive, slow, and administratively difficult because the industry had limited alternatives. That era is over.
Film and television production now moves through a competitive global marketplace. A production can compare Los Angeles against Georgia, New York, New Jersey, New Mexico, Louisiana, Illinois, Toronto, Vancouver, London, Budapest, Australia, and other jurisdictions that understand production as an economic-development prize. These competitors are not waiting for California to recover its seriousness. They are using tax credits, rebates, direct incentives, stage construction, workforce pipelines, simplified permitting, and aggressive film offices to reduce friction.
The central question for California’s next governor is not whether Hollywood still matters. It does. The question is whether California can make production rational again. Producers, studios, streamers, financiers, completion bond companies, line producers, and production executives do not make decisions through sentiment. They make them through budgets, schedules, incentive value, risk, crew depth, stage availability, location access, permitting certainty, and total cost. A state can be culturally iconic and still lose the work if the numbers and logistics no longer make sense.
The production crisis has already become visible. Los Angeles has seen major job losses, reduced shoot days, empty stages, closed production service businesses, and rising political anxiety around runaway production. The issue has moved into the California governor’s race and the Los Angeles mayoral race because it is no longer possible to pretend that Hollywood will simply take care of itself. The next governor must understand this as an industry problem, a workforce problem, a small-business problem, and a state-capacity problem. Hollywood is not only red carpets and celebrities. It is a working ecosystem.
The Crisis: California Is Losing Production Capacity
The most dangerous misconception is that California is merely losing individual projects. The deeper risk is that California is losing production capacity.
A single production leaving the state is painful but survivable. A sustained pattern of production leaving the state damages the ecosystem that makes production possible. Workers leave the industry. Vendors close. Stages sit empty. Younger workers lose entry points. Department heads age out without enough apprenticeship transfer. Location professionals lose volume. Post-production pipelines weaken. The state’s competitive advantage erodes not all at once, but through accumulated attrition.
This is why the production crisis cannot be treated as a normal business cycle. Production ecosystems are hard to build and easy to weaken. A trained crew base is not created by statute. It emerges from repeated work, union standards, apprenticeship, informal learning, production volume, vendor density, and institutional memory. Once that system thins out, recovery becomes slower and more expensive.
The Motion Picture Association reports that the American film and television industry supports more than 2 million jobs, pays more than $200 billion in wages, and includes more than 162,000 businesses. Those numbers matter because production spending spreads widely. A production pays crew, but it also pays caterers, hotels, restaurants, parking providers, dry cleaners, lumber suppliers, equipment houses, costume shops, prop houses, transportation companies, payroll providers, security firms, sound facilities, post-production vendors, and local governments. Hollywood is not a narrow luxury sector. It is a multiplier industry. [1]
California should therefore stop discussing film policy as if it were a favor to studios. The correct frame is performance-based economic development. If public incentives are tied to verified California wages, California vendors, California stages, California post-production, California hires, and California small businesses, the incentive is not a blank subsidy. It is a contract for in-state economic activity.
The Governing Principle: Make Staying in California the Smartest Decision
The next governor needs a clean governing principle: California does not need to be the cheapest place in the world to make film and television. It needs to be close enough on net cost and superior enough on execution that staying becomes the smartest decision.
That distinction matters. California cannot and should not try to win every project by racing to the bottom. The state’s advantage is not cheapness. Its advantage is density: talent, vendors, stages, unions, locations, creative leadership, post-production, legal infrastructure, finance relationships, and industry knowledge. But density only wins if the cost gap and administrative friction are manageable.
A production may accept slightly higher costs to shoot in California if the tradeoff includes better crew, better vendors, better locations, better creative access, better infrastructure, faster problem-solving, and fewer execution risks. It will not accept dramatically higher costs combined with slow permits, inconsistent agencies, uncertain incentives, high fees, and avoidable logistical problems.
The governor’s job is therefore to close the competitiveness gap. That means three things: reduce net production cost, reduce administrative uncertainty, and protect the workforce and vendor base that make California worth paying for.
Policy Pillar 1: Rebuild the Film and Television Tax Credit as a Production Competitiveness Tool
California’s film and television tax credit program is necessary, but it must become faster, more predictable, and more usable. The state has already expanded the program to $750 million annually under Program 4.0, with a five-year structure and funding categories for television projects, relocating television, independent features, and non-independent features. That expansion was important. It signaled that California finally understood the scale of the competitive threat. But the next governor should go further. [2]
The problem is not only the size of the incentive. It is the design. Production financing depends on certainty. A credit that is theoretically generous but practically slow, rigid, oversubscribed, difficult to monetize, or poorly timed is weaker than it appears. Producers do not budget from political speeches. They budget from bankable numbers.
The next governor should redesign the program around seven mechanisms.
First, California should create continuous rolling intake. Productions move on real calendars. Cast availability, director availability, stage holds, location holds, network deadlines, financing windows, and completion bond requirements do not wait for narrow application periods. If a project is ready, California should be ready.
Second, the state should provide conditional certification within 30 days for complete applications. A complete application that meets objective criteria should receive a timely answer. Delay is a cost. Uncertainty is a cost. Waiting is a competitive disadvantage.
Third, California should strengthen refundability, partial refundability, or transferability so that credits can be converted into real production financing. The state should treat usability as central to incentive design. A credit that cannot be valued cleanly by financiers does not function at full strength.
Fourth, the credit should reward California labor more directly. Productions receiving state support should receive stronger value when they hire California crew, use California vendors, shoot on California stages, and complete post-production in California. No verified California spend, no benefit.
Fifth, California should expand eligibility and bonus structures for post-production, visual effects, sound, scoring, editing, restoration, localization, and digital finishing. The state should not compete only for principal photography. It should compete for the entire production lifecycle.
Sixth, the program should protect independent and mid-budget productions. A healthy production ecosystem cannot be built only on tentpoles and major studio series. Independent films, mid-budget features, documentaries, commercials, and smaller series sustain crew, create advancement opportunities, and keep vendors active. California should reserve meaningful annual allocations for independent and mid-budget work.
Seventh, California should create a temporary Production Return Bonus through the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The Olympics will place Los Angeles under global attention. The state should use that window to create a visible production recovery. Returning productions that previously considered or used out-of-state or foreign jurisdictions should receive enhanced support if they hire California workers, use California vendors, and complete post-production in-state.
The fiscal defense is straightforward. This should not be designed as a studio giveaway. It should be structured as a performance contract. The state pays only for verified California activity. The public should be able to see how many jobs, shoot days, qualified expenditures, vendor payments, and post-production commitments each incentive supports.
Policy Pillar 2: Create One Permit California
Tax credits can attract productions, but permitting determines whether the state feels workable. California cannot spend millions attracting a production and then allow local bureaucracy to make the experience unpredictable.
The recent Baywatch dispute in Los Angeles became a warning sign because it revealed the gap between state-level incentive policy and local execution. The production reportedly had a major state tax credit and strong reasons to shoot in Los Angeles, but ran into restrictions and complications involving drones, night shooting, beach access, sand usage, parking, and multiple agencies. Whether every complaint was fully justified is less important than the broader message: Los Angeles can still feel administratively hostile to production. [3]
The next governor should create One Permit California: a statewide film permitting compact with standardized procedures for state agencies and participating local governments. This should not eliminate legitimate public safety, environmental, neighborhood, labor, or coastal protections. It should eliminate unnecessary confusion.
One Permit California should include standard permit categories, uniform terminology, clear fee ranges, maximum approval timelines, predictable insurance requirements, standard drone protocols, standard night-shoot protocols, pre-approved low-impact filming categories, transparent parking procedures, and early objection requirements. Agencies should not be allowed to raise major objections after a production has already built its schedule around assumed approvals unless there is a genuine safety, legal, or environmental issue.
For low-impact shoots, the state should establish a 72-hour approval pathway. These productions are often small, fast-moving, and financially vulnerable. A small documentary, interview shoot, digital project, commercial, or independent production should not face the same burden as a large action sequence.
For standard productions, the state should target a 10-business-day approval pathway when applications are complete. For complex shoots requiring road closures, pyrotechnics, coastal access, public safety review, or major neighborhood impact, there should be a clear escalation schedule with named decision-makers.
The governor should also appoint a cabinet-level Production Recovery Director with the authority to coordinate across the California Film Commission, Caltrans, State Parks, the Coastal Commission, public safety agencies, local film offices, FilmLA, ports, beaches, libraries, schools, and local jurisdictions. The role should not be ceremonial. It should have escalation power.
Production is logistics. California’s government structure needs to reflect that.
Policy Pillar 3: Protect the Below-the-Line Workforce
Hollywood policy often collapses into discussion of stars, studios, executives, and streaming companies. That is politically weak and economically incomplete. The strongest argument for production recovery is below-the-line labor.
The workers most exposed to runaway production are not the most famous people in the industry. They are production coordinators, assistant directors, grips, electricians, camera assistants, set dressers, art department workers, costumers, drivers, medics, location assistants, production accountants, payroll staff, editors, post-production coordinators, visual effects workers, sound teams, and production assistants trying to enter the industry.
California should treat this workforce as strategic infrastructure. The next governor should create a California Entertainment Workforce Corps built with unions, studios, streamers, independent producers, community colleges, high schools, workforce boards, veterans programs, and local governments.
This program should not be a generic arts initiative. It should be tied to actual productions receiving state benefits. Productions receiving tax credits should participate in training, apprenticeship, or entry-level hiring pathways where appropriate. The state should support paid pathways into production office work, locations, accounting, grip and electric, art department, transportation, safety, post-production, VFX coordination, and virtual production.
The workforce strategy also has to address affordability. Production work is often project-based. Workers survive between jobs. They absorb gaps. They wait for the next show. If rent, transportation, insurance, childcare, and basic living costs make it impossible to remain in Los Angeles, the crew base will weaken even if production begins to return.
This is where film policy connects to housing and transportation policy. The next governor does not need to solve California’s entire affordability crisis before helping entertainment workers. But the administration should recognize that workforce retention depends on the ability of working crew members to stay near the work.
Policy Pillar 4: Stabilize Production Vendors and Small Businesses
The entertainment economy depends on thousands of small businesses. Stages matter, but stages alone do not make an industry. Production requires lighting vendors, grip houses, costume shops, prop houses, picture car companies, catering firms, security providers, medics, payroll companies, post houses, sound facilities, equipment suppliers, fabrication shops, cleaning services, parking companies, and location-support vendors.
When these businesses close, California loses capacity. A returning production cannot hire a vendor that no longer exists. This is how temporary decline becomes structural decline.
The next governor should create a Production Vendor Stabilization Fund. The fund should provide targeted bridge grants, low-interest loans, tax relief, rent support, and procurement preferences for California-based production service businesses that can demonstrate revenue loss tied to the production downturn.
This should not be an unfocused bailout. It should be capacity preservation. Participating businesses should report anonymized employment, revenue, utilization, and service-category data so the state can identify which parts of the ecosystem are weakening. If costume houses are closing, the state should know. If post-production facilities are losing volume, the state should know. If transportation vendors are collapsing, the state should know.
California should also map production clusters across Los Angeles, Burbank, Santa Clarita, Culver City, Hollywood, North Hollywood, Studio City, Long Beach, the Bay Area, and other production regions. The state needs to understand where the ecosystem is strong, where it is fragile, and where targeted intervention can produce the greatest return.
Policy Pillar 5: Make California the Ethical AI and Production Technology Capital
Artificial intelligence is now part of the production crisis. The next governor should avoid two errors: treating AI only as a threat, or treating AI only as innovation. It is both.
AI can threaten actors, writers, background performers, voice performers, editors, visual effects workers, concept artists, and other creative labor if used to replace people without consent, compensation, or bargaining. At the same time, AI and related technologies can improve production planning, scheduling, accessibility, restoration, localization, previsualization, post-production workflow, asset management, and virtual production.
California should create the strongest ethical entertainment AI framework in the world. That framework should protect consent, compensation, and control over likeness, voice, digital replicas, and performance data. It should prevent exploitative replacement of human performers and creators. It should support union protections. It should clarify that AI-assisted work performed by covered employees remains covered work where appropriate.
But California should also attract responsible production technology companies. The state should create an Entertainment Technology Council including labor, studios, independent producers, technologists, legal experts, ethicists, and working production professionals. Its purpose should be practical: establish rules that protect people while making California the safest and most attractive place to build ethical entertainment technology.
The worst outcome would be protecting workers in theory while the jobs and tools move elsewhere. The best outcome is California leading the world in human-centered production technology.
Policy Pillar 6: Restore Independent and Mid-Budget Production
California must rebuild the middle of the industry. Tentpoles still get made. Ultra-low-budget projects still find ways to exist. But the mid-budget space has been weakened by streaming economics, theatrical uncertainty, financing risk, risk-averse studios, and more competitive jurisdictions.
Mid-budget and independent productions matter because they create volume. They train workers. They sustain vendors. They create opportunities for emerging directors, writers, producers, coordinators, department heads, and below-the-line crew. They also create a healthier creative culture than an industry split between massive franchises and tiny passion projects.
The next governor should reserve a meaningful portion of the state incentive program for independent and mid-budget productions. California should also create a credit-bridge financing partnership to help qualified independent producers convert approved incentives into production capital. The state should not choose creative winners. It should reduce financing friction so California-based creators can build and produce in California.
California should also care about ownership. A strong entertainment economy is not only a place where people work. It is a place where creators build long-term value. Policy should support independent production structures that allow creators to retain more rights, build companies, and scale within California.
Policy Pillar 7: Build a Federal-State Production Strategy
California is not only competing against other states. It is competing against countries. That means California should lead a national production strategy.
The next governor should organize a federal coalition with other production states, unions, studios, streamers, independent producers, mayors, and members of Congress. The goal should be a federal production incentive that rewards domestic labor, domestic production spending, domestic post-production, domestic VFX, and American creative infrastructure.
This is not isolationism. International collaboration will remain part of entertainment. But collaboration is different from hollowing out domestic capacity. The United States should not export production capability while assuming it will retain cultural leadership forever.
A federal incentive would also reduce the pressure for states to fight one another in a zero-sum subsidy contest. The correct target is international competitiveness. California should lead that argument.
Policy Pillar 8: Measure Everything Through a Public Production Recovery Dashboard
California should stop managing production policy through anecdotes and press releases. The next governor should create a public Production Recovery Dashboard updated quarterly.
The dashboard should track shoot days, tax credit utilization, approved projects, jobs created, jobs retained, qualified expenditures, California vendor spending, post-production spending, stage occupancy, permit approval times, low-impact shoot approvals, small business closures, workforce training placements, and regional distribution.
The California Film Commission already publishes approved-project information, including qualified taxpayers, allocated credits, filming days, jobs created, and qualified expenditures. That is a foundation. The next step is integration. California should combine Film Commission data, FilmLA data, local permitting data, workforce data, and vendor data into one practical view. [4]
If tax credits are increasing but permitting remains slow, policymakers should see it. If feature production improves but television remains weak, policymakers should see it. If independent productions are not accessing the program, policymakers should see it. If post-production keeps leaving California, policymakers should see it.
A serious recovery plan needs metrics. Otherwise, the state will confuse activity with progress.
The First 100 Days
The next governor should begin immediately.
On day one, the governor should issue a Hollywood Production Recovery Order declaring film, television, streaming, commercial, and post-production work a strategic economic sector of California.
Within 30 days, the governor should appoint a cabinet-level Production Recovery Director and convene the California Film Commission, GO-Biz, labor representatives, studios, streamers, independent producers, local film offices, FilmLA, city and county leaders, and production vendors.
Within 60 days, the administration should publish draft One Permit California standards, including standard permit categories, approval timelines, drone procedures, night-shoot procedures, and low-impact shoot rules.
Within 90 days, the governor should release draft legislation for the California Production Competitiveness Act, including tax credit modernization, workforce requirements, vendor support, and dashboard reporting.
Within 100 days, the state should publish an initial Production Recovery Dashboard baseline so the public can see the starting point.
The First Year
In the first year, the governor should pass the California Production Competitiveness Act, launch One Permit California with early-adopter jurisdictions, create the Production Vendor Stabilization Fund, establish the Entertainment Workforce Corps, expand credit usability, and introduce post-production and VFX retention incentives.
The state should also launch a global “Film California Now” campaign targeted at producers, studios, streamers, independent financiers, and international production executives. This campaign should not be generic tourism marketing. It should sell California as a production solution: talent, infrastructure, locations, credits, speed, certainty, post-production, and workforce.
By the end of year one, California should be able to show measurable improvement in permit speed, credit utilization, production inquiries, returning productions, and vendor stabilization.
By the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics
The 2028 Olympics should be treated as a production recovery deadline. By then, California should aim to reestablish Los Angeles as the most visible production capital in the world.
The state should target increased shoot days, higher stage occupancy, faster permits, stronger independent production volume, increased post-production retention, more California vendor spending, and documented workforce placements. The Olympics will bring global attention. California should make sure the entertainment capital of the world looks operationally alive when that attention arrives.
What California Must Not Do
California should not confuse attention with strategy. A roundtable is not a recovery plan. A press conference is not a permitting reform. A larger tax credit is not enough if the credit is not usable. A mayoral liaison is not enough if the region still has conflicting rules. A workforce program is not enough if workers cannot afford to stay. AI legislation is not enough if the jobs have already left.
California should also avoid partisan reduction. The production crisis is too important for slogans. Candidates from different political positions are identifying many of the same problems: incentives, permitting, bureaucracy, AI, workforce instability, affordability, and small business collapse. The practical overlap matters more than the campaign branding.
The state should also reject defeatism. Some argue that California can never be cost-competitive. That argument contains a warning, but it is not a strategy. California does not need to become the cheapest jurisdiction. It needs to be close enough on net cost and better on everything else.
Conclusion: My View From the Production Side
My view, based on my experience in the film industry, is that California can bring Hollywood production back, but not through nostalgia. The people who actually make production happen do not live inside slogans. They live inside call sheets, permits, budgets, location agreements, parking maps, crew lists, vendor invoices, safety meetings, production reports, schedule changes, and the constant pressure of making the day.
I have seen how much of production depends on coordination that the public never sees. When a production works, it can look effortless from the outside. It is not. It is hundreds of people solving problems before those problems become delays. It is departments depending on accurate information, fast decisions, reliable permits, available vendors, and crew members who know exactly how to execute under pressure. That is why California’s production crisis cannot be reduced to tax credits alone. Tax credits matter, but they do not fix a broken operating environment by themselves.
I also believe the state needs to listen more closely to the people who actually work inside production. Not only executives, not only elected officials, and not only public-facing advocates, but the coordinators, location managers, assistant directors, department heads, vendors, drivers, costumers, medics, post-production teams, and crew members who understand where the friction really is. These are the people who know when a permit process is too slow, when a location has become impossible, when a vendor is close to shutting down, when a crew base is thinning out, and when a production is about to choose another state because California made the decision too hard.
The public sees the actor, the trailer, the premiere, the award, or the headline. The production world sees the machinery underneath. It sees the production coordinator trying to keep information moving. It sees the location manager trying to solve a problem before it becomes a delay. It sees the crew member waiting for the next job. It sees the vendor wondering whether enough work will come in to stay open. It sees the producer comparing California against a jurisdiction that offers a faster answer, a stronger incentive, and fewer surprises.
That is why California cannot solve this with one policy. The next governor has to rebuild the operating environment around production. That means competitive tax credits, fast permitting, usable incentives, protected workers, stable vendors, serious AI rules, independent production support, federal partnership, and public accountability.
California still has the strongest hand. The talent is here. The crews are here. The studios are here. The history is here. The infrastructure is still here. The global brand is still here. But the world has learned how to compete for what California once took for granted.
I do not think the answer is to ask productions to stay out of loyalty. Loyalty is not a production plan. California has to earn the work again by making the decision to stay clear, practical, and financially defensible. If another state or country can offer faster answers, lower friction, and a stronger economic case, then California should not be surprised when productions leave. The right response is not resentment. The right response is competence.
Bringing Hollywood back means making staying the smartest decision. That should be the next governor’s standard. If California becomes faster, clearer, more affordable, more accountable, and more respectful of the people and businesses that make production possible, Hollywood can recover. If California keeps acting like Hollywood has nowhere else to go, Hollywood will keep proving that it does.References and Endnotes
[1] Motion Picture Association. The MPA reports that the American film and television industry supports 2.01 million jobs, pays $202 billion in wages, and includes more than 162,000 businesses.
[2] California Film Commission. Program 4.0 provides $750 million per fiscal year within a $3.75 billion five-year structure, with funding categories including television projects, relocating television, independent features, and non-independent features.
[3] The Guardian and Los Angeles Times reporting on the Baywatch production dispute described the practical difficulties created by local restrictions, permitting complexity, parking issues, drone rules, beach access, and broader concerns that Los Angeles has become difficult to film in.
[4] California Film Commission. The commission publishes approved-project data including qualified taxpayers, allocated credit amounts, in-state filming days, jobs created, and qualified expenditures.
[5] FilmLA reported a 22.4% decline in Greater Los Angeles on-location filming in the first quarter of 2025, with declines in television and feature production, reflecting both global production contraction and competitive pressure from other jurisdictions.
[6] Governor Gavin Newsom’s office described the 2025 expansion of California’s Film and Television Tax Credit Program and announced new television projects expected to generate significant economic activity in the state.
[7] POLITICO reported that Hollywood’s production crisis has become a major California political issue, with gubernatorial candidates forced to address runaway production, tax credits, AI, consolidation, and worker anxiety.
[8] POLITICO also reported that Hollywood’s political shift is being driven by economic pain, middle-class job losses, and the industry’s increasing focus on state and local policy.
[9] Los Angeles Times reporting described the Los Angeles production crisis as a mayoral campaign issue and cited lost economic activity, job losses, production service business closures, slow permitting, and the need for universal standards across jurisdictions.
[10] Steve Hilton’s “Bring Hollywood Home” plan identifies stronger incentives, faster approvals, rolling certification, streamlined permitting, independent production support, direct rebates, transferability, federal partnership, and the 2028 Olympics as policy levers for restoring California production.
[11] Tom Steyer’s film and entertainment plan identifies affordability, tax credits, permitting reform, AI protections, training, apprenticeships, federal advocacy, and support for creative workers as major components of a California entertainment policy.
[12] Crescenta Valley Weekly reported on Senator Adam Schiff’s Burbank discussion of production leaving California and emphasized the broader small-business and middle-class job ecosystem connected to entertainment production.
[13] Chris Fenton’s RealClearPolitics essay argues that offshoring production weakens domestic jobs, infrastructure, training pathways, cultural influence, and the broader American production ecosystem.
