{"id":469861,"date":"2026-09-20T08:52:39","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T08:52:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/469861\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T08:52:39","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T08:52:39","slug":"president-trump-says-hollywood-is-dead-do-las-film-and-tv-workers-agree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/469861\/","title":{"rendered":"President Trump says \u2018Hollywood is dead.\u2019 Do LA\u2019s film and TV workers agree?"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump says \u2018Hollywood is dead.\u2019 What\u2019s being done to revive it?<\/p>\n

In 2025, California majorly boosted its film and TV tax credit program for the first time since 2014 in an effort to keep jobs in the Golden State. One year out, is it working as planned? And why is President Trump now calling for a national incentive program? On this episode of Imperfect Paradise, we explore these questions with veteran entertainment journalist Dawn Chmielewski, and hear from local film and TV workers about how they\u2019re faring.<\/p>\n

\u201cWas it like this during the Great Depression?\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a question that prop house owner Pam Elyea says she\u2019s asked herself in recent years, as the film and TV industry has weathered multiple hits \u2014 the pandemic, the dual industry strikes of 2023, the 2025 fires \u2014 and a loss of production jobs to other states and countries that began decades ago.<\/p>\n

Elyea, along with her husband Jim, opened History for Hire<\/a>, a prop house in North Hollywood, in 1985. Before the pandemic, they had a staff of 20 people, but now employ only nine full-time employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs an employer and a business owner, the feeling you’re always trying to overcome is that feeling of weariness,\u201d Elyea says. \u201c\u200aThat it was just dragging on and on, and there’s really no big hope in sight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It got everybody excited\u2019<\/p>\n

Elyea says she was heartened by the boost to California\u2019s film and TV tax incentive program<\/a> in July of 2025 \u2014 from $330 million to $750 million: \u201cIt got everybody excited.”<\/p>\n

Elyea says she started to see positive effects sooner than she expected, about three months in, first with new TV productions that were tax credit recipients coming to History for Hire for props, and more recently feature films.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Members of the Set Decorators Society of America (Pam Elyea in center) in Washington, D.C., lobbying for a federal film and TV tax incentive on September 16, 2026.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s also now lobbying for a new federal film and TV tax incentive<\/a>, which President Donald Trump recently said he\u2019d support<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre we at where we were before? No,\u201d she says. \u201cBut we certainly are so much better, and so it kind of gives you hope moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Flickering back to life\u2019<\/p>\n

Elyea\u2019s experience is reflective of some of the data on film and TV productions in Los Angeles over the last year.<\/p>\n

On the LAist podcast Imperfect Paradise<\/a>, entertainment journalist Dawn Chmielewski notes that Film LA<\/a>, which tracks permitting for on-location shoots in and around Los Angeles, showed that when it comes to television production, there was a 51% increase in the second quarter over the first.<\/p>\n

\u201cOverall, the numbers are still down year over year,\u201d Chmielewski says. \u201cBut it’s showing that the industry is sort of flickering back to life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another promising data point Chmielewski points out: ProdPro<\/a>, which tracks productions around the world, \u201cshowed that both the number of films being shot and overall production spend are both up in California for the second quarter of this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there are also statistics that point to a less rosy picture.<\/p>\n

Film LA research<\/a> that shows the number of shoot days in Los Angeles has decreased by nearly 50 percent since 2017. And it\u2019s estimated that since the peak of the streaming era in 2022, nearly 50 thousand production jobs<\/a> have been lost in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

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\u2018It feels incredibly uncertain\u2019<\/p>\n

Costumer Andrea Wheeler describes the current climate in the industry as one where \u201ceverybody is on eggshells,\u201d with so many people she knows who\u2019ve had to pivot to other careers that \u201cyou feel like you\u2019re in a dying industry right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Andrea Wheeler is a costumer who has worked on TV shows like “Lopez v. Lopez” and movies like Marvel’s “Eternals.”<\/p>\n

(<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Andrea Wheeler<\/p>\n

)<\/p>\n

While Wheeler was recently able to find work on a show that moved from Vancouver to California because of the tax credit boost here, she says the pay and working conditions didn\u2019t match up to the kind of work she was able to find in the past.<\/p>\n

From around 2016 to 2019, she says, \u201cif you were in a job that was really atrocious, just like really bad working conditions … You could just leave and find another job the next day. There was a lot of security there, [but] not now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Chineza Ezinkwo is a production coordinator based in Los Angeles. She most recently worked on “Tyrant,” a Charlize Theron film that shot in LA.<\/p>\n

(<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Chineza Ezinkwo<\/p>\n

)<\/p>\n

Chineza Ezinkwo, a production coordinator who\u2019s worked in the film and TV industry in Los Angeles since 2011, echoes Wheeler.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aYes, there’s more work happening, but also it’s hard to find,\u201d Ezinkwo says. \u201cYou can’t really plan to build a life in the way that you felt like you used to even a few years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, she says there is also a bit of a renewed sense of optimism in the industry right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels incredibly uncertain, but I will say there’s more hope these past two years than there was certainly [in] the past three or four years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump says \u2018Hollywood is dead.\u2019 What\u2019s being done to revive it? In 2025, California majorly boosted its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[184888,99330,184889,184890,48,52,51,47,50,49,184891],"class_list":["post-469861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-below-the-line","tag-film-tax-credits","tag-hollywood-industry","tag-industry-insiders","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-tv-tax-credits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469861","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=469861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}