The latest quarterly report released Wednesday by FilmLA, Los Angeles' film permit office, confirmed the suffering suffered by production crews this year and signaled that the situation has only gotten worse.
Filming days fell 5% in a three-month period from July to September to 5,048, marking the weakest quarter of 2024, and every scripted production category lags five-year averages on both a quarterly and yearly basis. annual basis. . A bright spot came in the feature film production column, which increased more than 25% last quarter to 476 days of filming. FilmLA stressed that an expansion of California's film and television tax credit program is needed to curb the downward trajectory and keep productions in the state. For years it has been both a rallying cry and a source of confusion in the industry.
He recently spoke with a director who made more than half of his feature films in the state, Judd Apatow The Hollywood journalist at a Star Industry fundraiser in Malibu on Sept. 23, where he felt like talking about the troubling landscape of local manufacturing and that confusion.
“I've never understood why California doesn't think they should have a healthy tax break for our industry,” Judd Apatow explained before a hosting gig at the star-studded fundraiser Rock4EB! “I was just in Michigan and I remember they had a big discount for a while and then all of a sudden they got rid of it. All these people moved to the city to set up an industry there, but then they had to leave. Other places like Georgia do very well, and it must make economic sense for them because they've been doing this for a long time. They know the numbers and why it adds value to the state.”
Seeing the decline of Los Angeles and California in general is emotional for Apatow. “It's heartbreaking to see this happen because as people tighten their belts, there are very few situations where people can stay in the city simply because they want to. Most of my films were made in California – four out of seven – and all of them could have been made elsewhere, but there's an energy and vibe in California that made it all work.”
Apatow films set in California include those from 2005 The forty-year-old virgin with Steve Carell, 2007 Pregnant with Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl, 2009 Fun people with Rogen, Adam Sandler and Leslie Mann, and those of 2012 This is 40 with Mann alongside Paul Rudd. Asked if he would have difficulty making one of those films today in California, Apatow said the green light is always at the end of the budget equations.
“Everyone is worried about costs,” he explained. “It's just a completely different paradigm for everything. There are movies we've made with healthy budgets that they would like us to make for half that and that wouldn't be possible today, or we wouldn't have enough shooting days here to make it look right. Today it's more challenging, but you still have to fight.”
Some of these battles involve algorithms, he added. “It's scary because everyone has too much information and, at some level, they let the algorithms and [artificial intelligence] making decisions that should be made with the heart and instinct. This is something we all need to pay attention to these days. [Studios and streamers] you need to do things that don't make sense. If you look at the movies and TV of our past, if you pitched those projects today, they wouldn't get made. Try throwing [Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi epic] 2001: A Space Odyssey Right now.”
While Apatow suggests that creativity is suffering at the mercy of algorithms, audiences are also seeing a difference when it comes to the exodus of manufacturing, both locally and in other major U.S. cities. “There's a lot going on from Prague to New York right now, and you realize that when you watch the films. You say, I don't know what it is, but it seems like a very strange New York.