On November 8th, negotiators for the actors’ union and studios announced that they had reached an agreement to end the actor’s strike after a 27-week shutdown, the longest in the history of the entertainment industry.
All eyes turned to the business of resuming production after an unfortunate and lengthy shutdown. It appears that the ramp-up is taking longer than hoped. The volume of filming in Los Angeles during the fourth quarter was 32.4% from 2022. This includes filming of commercials and reality TV, neither of which were impacted by the writers’ and actors’ strikes.
When looking only at shoots for movies and TV series, the drop-off was even more dramatic. The number of hours spent filming TV drama series was down 91.3% compared to Q4 2022, TV comedies were down 85.6%, and feature film work was down 57.3%.
While production in the first quarter of 2024 is accelerating, there is still some anxiety that it will not get back to pre-strike levels anytime soon. Almost all studios are pursuing cost-cutting and layoffs, which will constrain the number of new projects they greenlight. Even for those that are pursued, there appears to be a move towards shifting the work out of Los Angeles to less expensive centers in other U.S. cities or overseas.
To stem this tide, The L.A. City Council voted unanimously in December to take steps to speed up the approval of new production in L.A. Last year’s strikes are estimated to have cost the California economy more than $6 billion, and having a streamlined and cost-effective environment for production is key to having that income return.