Annie Leonard, the co-founder of Committee for the First Amendment, voices her concerns about Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery in front of the California Attorney General’s Office in Oakland on Sept. 20, 2026. Photo by Pablo Unzueta for CalMatters
In sheer economic terms, Southern California’s movie and television production industry is not terribly important, generating scarcely 1% of the state’s $4 trillion-plus annual economic output.
However, Hollywood is California’s signature icon and a cultural powerhouse with global impact. Therefore, its actors, directors, executives and unions wield disproportionate political clout.
Thus, when the industry began experiencing an outflow of production to other states and other nations a few decades ago, it turned to Sacramento for help and got it.
Beginning during the governorship of actor Arnold Schwarzenegger two decades ago, governors and legislators have granted it steadily increasing subsidies, topped just a few days ago with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature on Senate Bill 186, expanding the tax credits in-state productions can claim to offset their costs.
So far, however, the many millions of dollars the industry has exacted from a state budget that continues to leak red ink have failed to stem the outflow of production. Variety, which has…
