{"id":203638,"date":"2026-03-04T08:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T08:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/203638\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T08:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T08:54:14","slug":"why-mayor-karen-bass-showed-up-for-cinespace-studios-ribbon-cutting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/203638\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Mayor Karen Bass Showed Up for Cinespace Studios’ Ribbon-Cutting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLos Angeles Mayor Karen Bass<\/a> doesn\u2019t show up for the grand openings of many local businesses. But early Monday morning she trekked all the way out to the northwestern edge of the city, more than 25 miles from City Hall, to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremonies for Cinespace\u2019s new studio complex in Woodland Hills. If there was any doubt as to why she made the effort, she cleared that up when she stepped behind the podium on Stage 1 and greeted the press and other assembled guests with her signature toothy grin.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen we invest in the [entertainment] industry, the industry invests in Los Angeles, and I think it\u2019s important that we always educate Angelenos to all of the ways the industry impacts our economy, all of the ancillary businesses, and all of the economic growth that happens when industry stays here and films here,\u201d said Bass, who also attended the opening of East End Studios\u2019 new Mission Campus in L.A.\u2019s Arts District back in January.<\/p>\n

\n\tBuilt inside the shell of the former headquarters and manufacturing facility for Catalina Yachts, the new 180,000-square-foot Cinespace campus boasts six 18,000-square-foot soundstages with 30-foot clearances, along with 72,000 square feet of production offices and support space. The complex\u2019s first tenant, the thriller \u201cNightwatching,\u201d starring Mila Kunis, has been shooting on Stages 2 and 3 since early February, and on Monday, the production had also commandeered one of the lunch rooms to rehearse a stunt sequence.<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking to Variety following the ribbon-cutting, Cinespace Studios<\/a> co-CEO Eoin Egan<\/a> explained that when the company \u2013 which also has production campuses in Chicago, Toronto, Atlanta, Wilmington, North Carolina and Germany \u2013 began looking for a site in Los Angeles around 2022, it wanted a place where they could establish a turnkey \u201cone-stop shop,\u201d where \u201cwe don\u2019t have parking down the street.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLos Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, center, with Cinespace co-CEO Eoin Egan at the March 2 opening of Cinespace Studios Los Angeles in Woodland Hills <\/p>\n

\n\tEgan got all that and more. Cinespace Studios Los Angeles is located in a bustling retail district on one of the Valley\u2019s major thoroughfares, Victory Boulevard. Across the street is a mini-mall with tenants that include a deli, a liquor store, a nail salon, a chiropractor and a foot and body massage business. Directly behind the studio is a Home Depot, which \u201cproductions are in and out of all the time for everything from gaffer\u2019s tape to toilet paper to lumber,\u201d said Egan, who also noted that crew members regularly patronize the nearby B.J.\u2019s Restaurant & Brewhouse location.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe San Fernando Valley may not be where Hollywood\u2019s cool kids hang out, but despite the confusing constellation of names given to various sections (North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, Encino, Northridge, etc.), most of it is part of the City of Los Angeles. More importantly, a wealth of talent makes its home on this side of \u201cthe hill\u201d (aka, the Santa Monica Mountains), particularly the below-the-line variety.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHeads of department tend to live here in the West Valley and in [nearby] Studio City, so we\u2019re seeing those synergies and it\u2019s already been an added value,\u201d said Egan.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe surrounding neighborhood is no stranger to production. Another one of the day\u2019s speakers, L.A. City Councilman Bob Blumenfield, pointed out that Cinespace Studios Los Angeles sits on land that was once part of Warner Ranch, where numerous Westerns were shot back in the \u201830s and \u201840s. More recently, the suburban developments that replaced it in the 1950s onward have served as locations for projects ranging from \u201cCurb Your Enthusiasm\u201d to various Paul Thomas Anderson movies, including 2021\u2019s \u201cLicorice Pizza.\u201d The facilities are also about two miles northwest of the former site of the RKO Encino Ranch \u2013 sold in 1954 and redeveloped, primarily as the Encino Village subdivision<\/a> of mid-century modern tract homes \u2013 where downtown Bedford Falls was constructed for 1946\u2019s \u201cIt\u2019s a Wonderful Life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut building a studio complex is a risky proposition. When Cinespace embarked on the project, the industry was in the midst of a post-pandemic, peak-streaming production boom. Since then, there\u2019s been a major contraction, exacerbated by dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023, followed by renegotiated IATSE and Teamster contracts in 2024 that spurred more projects to shoot outside the U.S.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat lent added urgency to the lobbying efforts mounted by Cinespace and other industry players in support of California\u2019s Film and Television Tax Credit Program 4.0, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in July 2025. It raised the annual cap on the incentive from $330 million to $750 million and bumped the base tax credit from 20%-25% on qualified expenditures to 35%-40%. It also made it fully refundable for the first time, enabling companies to get cash back from California if their credit exceeds their state tax burden. The initial results were positive: As of January 2026, 119 projects (39 television and 80 feature film) had been approved under the revised program, which are estimated to produce 25,000 crew hires and $4.1 billion in economic activity.<\/p>\n

\n\tBass also did her part, issuing an executive directive in May 2025 dubbed \u201cReel Change: Supporting Local Film and Television Production,\u201d ordering city departments to take a proactive film-friendly approach to production and make iconic locations like Griffith Observatory and the Central Library more accessible and affordable for filming.<\/p>\n

\n\tDespite these improvements, success is far from assured. According to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation\u2019s 2026 Annual Economic Forecast released last month, sound stage occupancy hovered above 93% between 2016 and 2021, but by 2024 it had dipped to 63%. Meanwhile, sound stage square footage grew by 53% between 2020 and 2025. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut California Film Commission\u00a0executive director Colleen Bell<\/a> struck a positive note when she spoke to Variety on Monday.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen a project is accepted into [California\u2019s incentive] program, they have 180 days to start principal photography, so you\u2019re not going to see an instant spike,\u201d said Bell, who also addressed the crowd at the event. \u201cThere\u2019s a gradual increase of production taking place, so stages will start to fill up slowly, but it\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass doesn\u2019t show up for the grand openings of many local businesses. But early…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[94377,94378,94379,4132,48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-203638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-cinespace-studios","tag-colleen-bell","tag-eoin-egan","tag-karen-bass","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}