For the most part, Nikki Glaser was plugged into the zeitgeist with her Golden Globe Awards monologue earlier this month. She was funny, sly, cutting, insightful and what your swingin’, groovy grandparents would’ve called “hip” and “au courant.” But she missed the mark when she referred to Los Angeles as a place “where no TV or film has been made for the past six years.”

“I understand it was intended as a joke, but I didn’t laugh. I think I let out an audible, ‘No-o-o-o,’” says Colleen Bell, who has been executive director of the California Film Commission since 2019. “There’s no question that we’ve had our fair share of challenges here in California. But the truth is, in the past six years, we’ve had over 300 film and TV projects here through our tax credit program, including ‘One Battle After Another,’ which was a Golden Globe winner that night, shot entirely in California. What Nikki’s moment did underscore is why the work we’re doing matters and why perception matters.”

The exodus of film and TV production from California is a real and painful thing. Last week, FilmLA released its latest data on film, television and commercial production in Greater Los Angeles, which showed a 16.1% drop in total shoot days year-over-year from 2024 to 2025. On the positive side, shoot days were up 5.6% in Q4 2025 over the previous quarter.

Other recent developments have given the state’s film community even more reason to be optimistic, namely California’s Film and Television Tax Credit Program 4.0, which was enacted in July 2025. As of mid-January, 119 projects (39 television and 80 feature film) have been approved under the revised program that will result in an estimated 25,000 crew hires and $4.1 billion in economic activity. They include Ang Lee’s gold rush epic “Gold Mountain,” Michael Mann’s “Heat 2,” the next “Jumanji” movie, a “Baywatch” TV series reboot, second seasons of Apple TV’s “The Studio” and Netflix’s “The Night Agent,” a Snoop Dogg biopic from Universal and an untitled Sony feature starring Glen Powell. 

“I think that those numbers signal that producers are once again committing to California after a period of disruption from strikes, wildfires and the streaming reset,” says Bell. “And as the market stabilizes, we anticipate increased utilization of the program, more projects advancing into physical production and sustained growth across the state in 2026.”

The revised incentive raises the annual cap from $330 million to $750 million per year through fiscal 2030-31, paying out $3.75 billion over five years. Beyond the massive funding increase, it delivers a base credit of 35%-40% on qualified expenditures (up from the previous 20%-25%), makes the credit fully refundable for the first time (meaning companies can get cash back from California if their credit exceeds their state tax burden) and raises the cap on qualified expenses per project, from $10 million to $20 million on independent features and $100 million to $120 million on studio projects. 

Collectively, the changes put California’s incentive on par with other major U.S. production hubs, such as Georgia, which has an uncapped 30% transferable tax credit, and New York, which offers a base 30%-40% refundable tax credit with an $800 million annual cap.

For some productions, getting approved for the improved California incentive is the difference between getting a greenlight and going into turnaround. For others, it means extra savings, the ability for cast and crew to sleep in their own beds, access to better talent and facilities and the chance to shoot California for California, instead of traveling out of state to Georgia or New Mexico or overseas to Australia or South Africa in search of a stand-in. 

Writer/director Cheryl Isaacson says that when she got an email notifying her that her sub-$10 million indie “Girlie” — described as a drama about “a closeted college freshman [who] finds forbidden love on a conservative Christian campus” — was approved for the incentive there was a round of “high-five” texts to her whole production team.

“This script is actually, like, 13 years old and it has always been a [San Francisco] Bay Area story; it’s always been a California story,” says Isaacson. “We were at the point, just because of the pure math of it, where we were going to have to look at other states if we did not get this incentive.”

Without the California tax credit, Isaacson wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of the perfect location, sitting right in her backyard: Holy Names University, a private Catholic college founded in 1868. After it closed in 2023 due to financial difficulties, it was acquired by BH properties, which rebranded the 60-acre site as the Oakland Hills Campus and began marketing it as a film-friendly location, boasting a nursing simulation center, library, theater, chapel, dorms and athletic facilities.

“We will be shooting almost two-thirds of our film there on that campus,” notes Isaacson. “It’s really become kind of a production hub for the Bay Area. It’s really exciting to see it growing. And they’re
so supportive.”

The improved California incentive is also very good news for the companies that broke ground on new soundstages at the height of the streaming boom, before the dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023 and the subsequent industry contraction kneecapped the production economy. They range from the 16 new soundstages built as part of a $500 million-plus makeover of the historic Warner Bros. Ranch in Burbank to indie East End Studios, which has two soundstages in Glendale and another set to open in Downtown Los Angeles.

East End Studios CEO Craig Chapman is happy about the improved incentive, but he says tax credits alone won’t keep production in California or anywhere else in the United States, for that matter.

“The labor rates here are on average about 40% higher than in Europe and much, much higher than other countries, especially when taking the exchange rate into consideration,” notes Chapman. “We think that there needs to be a number of scenarios in order to get production to stay in the U.S, which would include revamping of the union agreements to make them more affordable for content creators and a federal incentive of some sort.”

That’s not an encouraging analysis for a California crew base that has absorbed one body blow after another in recent years, but Bell says she can feel a positive momentum building.

“I’m going to events and meetings and speaking on panels and people are coming up to me saying, ‘I’ve actually just booked a job and so did my neighbor and my wife,’” recounts Bell. Also, “I’m seeing the call sheets and have direct insights to people going back to work, getting paychecks in their pockets and doing the jobs.”

The true impact of the improved California incentive has yet to be felt. As FilmLA CEO Denise Gutches points out, the first projects were approved under the program in August, and they have 180 days to start filming, “so we’re expecting to see [the effects] in February. We’re also working with the California Film Commission to understand which projects will be working locally in the region of Los Angeles, so that we can start to reach out to them to say, ‘What can we do to support you better through our production planning team?’”

Although California’s production activity has been in decline in recent years — with Los Angeles’ share of U.S.-produced scripted content dipping to a historic low of 18.3% in 2024 — the state’s century-plus reign as the No. 1 film and TV production economy in the world has continued unabated. And all things production should further improve when, on Jan. 26, the application window opens for animation and large-scale competition series, which are eligible for the California tax credit for the first time under the revised incentive.

“We had work that we needed to do on the state level, which we’ve done, so I’m optimistic about the future,” says Bell. “We’ve got the infrastructure and the equipment and the innovation. It’s all happening here in California.”