Thanks in part to the expanded California Film and Television Tax Credit, Los Angeles is starting to stem the tide against the decline of local production, though there’s still a long way to undoing the damage.
In FilmLA’s latest quarterly report published on Tuesday, the permitting agency reported 5,121 days of on-location shooting in the first quarter of 2026. That’s a 10.7% improvement from the 4,625 shoot days recorded in the last quarter of 2025, but still 3.3% down from the 5,295 days recorded in the prior year quarter.
“We have a long way to go, but after years of decline, Hollywood is finally turning a corner with more productions and more jobs,” said L.A. Mayor Karen Bass. “We have worked hand in hand with industry partners to make filming in Los Angeles easier and more affordable. That means lowering costs, cutting red tape and creating a more predictable and efficient process for production. And we are not stopping here. City Hall will continue to partner with the industry to support good paying union jobs and expand economic opportunity across L.A.”
In Q1, FilmLA found that projects that received tax incentives through California’s expanded program accounted for nearly 7% of all shoot days taking place in Greater Los Angeles, including 21.8% of all feature film production and 17.1% of all television production happening on location.
The one major blemish in the quarterly report, and the biggest factor in the year-over-year decrease, was the continued decline in reality TV shooting to just 463 shoot days, a steep 52% year-over-year decline and a staggering 71% below the five-year average. While shows like “The Real Housewives of Orange County” still shoot in Southern California, a survey from the analytics firm Luminate shows that the number of premiering reality TV shows shot in the entire United States has fallen 33% since 2022.
Still, the list of projects that did shoot in Los Angeles include Tony Gilroy’s Searchlight feature film “Behemoth!”, Fox’s “Baywatch” reboot, the final season of HBO’s “Hacks,” and new seasons of shows like Apple’s “The Studio” and “The Morning Show,” Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This” and FX’s record-breaking comedy “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”
Since the cap of the California tax credit program was raised from $330 million to $750 million last July, 147 projects have been approved for incentives in the program. That is a 53% year-over-year increase.
Not all of those projects will have an impact on FilmLA’s on-location shooting report. Some projects that will be produced in Los Angeles are animated projects, like Disney/20th Century’s upcoming “Simpsons” movie, while others are set to hold 463 shoot days outside of Los Angeles in counties like San Francisco, San Diego and Mendocino, among others.
But more projects are expected to get their shooting underway in Los Angeles in the summer, including “The Pitt” Season 3 as well as Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s untitled feature follow-up to their Best Picture Oscar winner “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
“While it’s still too early to make predictions for the coming months, the increase in Shoot Days we are seeing in key categories gives hope for a broader rise in production activity and points to the California Film and Television Tax Program’s growing impact on local job creation,” said FilmLA CEO, Denise Gutches.
“While some of the latest numbers are encouraging, we know that there is still significant work to be done to bring filming and jobs back to the region. FilmLA is committed to building on the progress underway with our government partners to make filming here as easy, affordable and straightforward as possible,” Gutches added.
Beyond the state tax credit program, which is aimed towards supporting projects with the largest crew sizes possible to increase jobs, FilmLA has launched a pilot program for “low impact” productions, streamlining the process for independent and new media productions with small cast and crew sizes and which do not require departmental permit reviews for safety, road closure or special condition inspections. The agency estimates that 30% of the permits it has received in the past three years would have qualified for this expedited process.
*We are optimistic that this newly launched Low Impact Permit Pilot Program in partnership with FilmLA and the City of Los Angeles, designed to reduce permitting costs and streamline the film permitting process, will make a meaningful difference for local filmmakers. Keeping our talented, highly skilled film industry workforce employed here at home in Los Angeles, the film capital of the world, remains our primary focus,” said Gutches.
