Los Angeles is building new, modern soundstages to attract film and TV productions, even as older studios face low occupancy.

Currently, Los Angeles is on its way to creating brand new soundstages. Places like East End Studios’ Mission Campus and Echelon Studios Hollywood are going to be the epicenter for these new spaces.

So what’s really happening here? LA isn’t funding the remodels, private investors are taking the gamble, and the city’s entertainment community is watching it unfold closer than ever. 2026 could be a year for bouncing back, but it’s also shaping up to be a survival-of-the-fittest battle.

Groups like Bardas Investment and Hudson Pacific are dropping hundreds of millions to build these things. Basically, it’s a private-money arms race to lure productions back to LA, and everyone’s trying to build the flashiest, most efficient studios.

Even as Hollywood talks about a production reset, many of Los Angeles’ soundstages are sitting eerily quiet. Older, once-bustling studios like Radford in Studio City and Saticoy in Van Nuys are largely vacant, struggling to attract occupants.

Occupancy across the city’s stages is around 60%, which is far lower than expected, leaving massive spaces under-exploited.

Some properties were given back to lenders because they didn’t earn enough, showing the market is tight, even in LA’s entertainment capital.

The emptiness is present mostly at studios that lack prime locations and more modern structures and systems inside.

Even some historic studios have to compete mainly on price, offering steep discounts just to fill their stages. Meanwhile, high-profile productions are cherry-picking the most reliable spaces, leaving smaller and older stages to sit without purpose. Quiet, underused and waiting for the next wave of projects that may never come.

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Take East End Studios’ Mission Campus: a $230 million, 255,000-square-foot facility with five massive stages and an office space right on-site. Then there’s Echelon Studios Hollywood, a $400 million project with 11 stages, office space, private bungalows and even restaurants and retail. The attraction? If you want your production to run without chaos, these are the places to be.

Some studios will rise and dominate. Others will quietly disappear. For anyone paying attention, the drama has become just as big off-camera as it is on.