While the number of shoot days saw a small year-over-year drop, FilmLA’s latest quarterly report shows that film and television production in Los Angeles County continues to stay above pre-pandemic levels.
The report recorded 9,220 shoot days for Q2 2022, down 5.8% from 9,791 shoot days in Q2 2021 but 6.8% above the 8,632 shoot days recorded in Q2 2019.
“We expected we would see production return to pre-pandemic levels sometime within the year, and now here we are,” observed FilmLA President Paul Audley. “Resilient in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, and with industry leaders taking steps to protect both worker and community safety, we have confidence in the film industry’s ability to sustain local production at or above its historic levels.”
The breakdown in production shows 898 shooting days for feature films, 995 days for TV dramas, 309 days for TV comedies, 1,110 days for commercials and 3,076 days in the “Other” category, which includes student films, photography shoots, music videos and documentaries.
The largest main category continues to be reality TV, with 2,611 days logged on shows like ABC’s “American Idol,” NBC’s “LA Fire and Rescue” and Paramount+’s “Hip Hop My House.”
In the other categories, major projects being filmed in Los Angeles include Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” for Warner Bros., the remake of “White Men Can’t Jump” for 20th Century Studios, and Jonah Hill’s untitled Netflix film. TV projects include HBO’s “Euphoria” and “Barry,” Netflix’s “Dead to Me” and the final season of NBC’s “This Is Us.”
The quarterly report comes as California faces a surge in COVID-19 infections thanks to the rapidly spreading BA.5 subvariant. Official numbers have seen a steady rise in infections since April with the current 7-day average at around 6,700 in LA County, though actual numbers are believed to be much higher since the majority of new infections are discovered via at-home tests that are rarely reported.