{"id":336123,"date":"2026-05-28T16:51:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T16:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/336123\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T16:51:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T16:51:09","slug":"watch-fifth-season-president-chris-slager-talk-filming-in-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/336123\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch Fifth Season President Chris Slager Talk Filming in California"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the 2026 Cannes<\/a> Film<\/a> Festival, IndieWire and The American Pavilion partnered<\/a> to present the second annual California Day<\/a>, an event for programming focusing on the Golden State\u2019s long-held status as the premier destination for film and television production in the United States and the world. The event included the panel \u201cPowering Production: Why California Leads,\u201d a conversation between California Film Commission executive director Colleen Bell and Christopher Slager, the President of Film at Fifth Season. <\/p>\n

The two sat down for a conversation about filming in the Southern California area, how production concentration has shifted in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic, and how to power and encourage more production work in the Los Angeles area.<\/p>\n

\"THE<\/a> \"NEW<\/a> <\/p>\n

As Bell explained early on during the conversation, the state of California passed an initiative last July that increased annual funding for the Film and TV tax credit program from $330 million to $750 million. The move, designed to help the state remain competitive with other jurisdictions offering robust tax programs to encourage production, has caused a 400 percent increase in applications.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we were doing something right. And, you know, we really went about the process, we went out and we did a listening tour,\u201d Bell said during the panel. \u201cWe talked to the filmmakers, independents, the studios, the streamers, everyone. What were we doing in California that was working, and what wasn\u2019t?\u201d<\/p>\n

During the conversation, Slager spoke about the upcoming Ang Lee film \u201cGold Mountain,\u201d which is being filmed in California. The movie, an adaptation of the acclaimed 2020 novel \u201cHow Much of These Hills Is Gold\u201d by C. Pam Zhang, is a very uniquely Californian story, focusing on two Chinese immigrant sisters traversing the Californian frontier during the last days of the Gold Rush to bury their father. Slager said that based on the story, it was vital to find a way to make a shoot in the actual state work for the production.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, we had to shoot it in California. But how?,\u201d Slager said. \u201cIt really was the new program. As we were up there, boots on the ground, trying to figure out all the pieces and costs were mounting and challenges were mounting. It\u2019s a true expedition, this production. the new program was released, and as we started looking through that, as an independent studio, taking the cap off of the indies allowed for us to look at it from a whole different perspective. We made the choice to pause production and take the risk to reapply for the new program. I don\u2019t know what we would have done had we not gotten in, but honestly, shooting it in the United States anywhere, with the ambition of the movie, probably would\u2019ve
been impossible. And maybe that would\u2019ve meant the movie wouldn\u2019t have existed. It was as simple as that. We had to preserve the California piece, and if it weren\u2019t for the timing of the new program, it\u2019s probably a movie that would be lost to time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watch the full conversation in the video<\/a> above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, IndieWire and The American Pavilion partnered to present the second annual California…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":336124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[138441,7,138442,9,8,133739,1924,138830,5050],"class_list":["post-336123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-american-pavilion","tag-california","tag-california-day","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-cannes","tag-film","tag-future-of-filmmaking","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336123","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=336123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/336124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}