“The Hollywood industry is dying,” comedian David Spade told Fly on the Wall cohost Dana Carvey last week, specifically calling out California Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.
“Dude, I’m so old,” he said. “I was on the lot at CBS Radford when we were doing Just Shoot Me… It was the greatest lot. Of course, [the lot] just filed for bankruptcy. Terrifying in L.A. Thanks, Karen Bass. Thanks, Gavin.”
Earlier this year, the storied production facility — Seinfeld shot there, too — was turned over to creditors after Hackman Capital Partners defaulted on a $1.1 billion mortgage. “Studio owners have struggled to lease space due to a sharp downturn in film and TV production volume since 2022,” Variety reported in January.
“Survive Until 2025” was Hollywood’s mantra in 2024, but last year brought zero relief from post-COVID TV and movie production woes. L.A.’s entertainment industry job losses amounted to 40% or more of 2022 highs. IBT reported last week that local studios “logged only 19,694 days of filming in Los Angeles in 2025, compared to 36,792 in 2022.”
It’s the production crews who suffer most from Tinseltown’s downfall, and by and large, they aren’t woke Hollywood progressives. They’re workingmen and women who tend to be far more centrist or even conservative than the stars and studios they work for.
And Another Thing: I always liked Spade, but only recently learned that he’s no Hollywood wokester, either. “I don’t want half the crowd tuning me out,” Spade told Variety in 2019, explaining why he didn’t jump on the TDS bandwagon with the rest of the industry. “When people do things, I think it’s fair game to make a few jokes, and then you move on – not too personal, of course.”
Some say the economics of streaming — particularly Netflix — are to blame, but as Carvey told Spade on the same podcast, “The amount of productions is dying, and so they have to do something so more production comes back, and that starts with negotiating with the union and also subsidizing the industry tax breaks to compete with Romania.”
California and L.A. stopped competing for big-ticket productions, which is why studios decamped to Georgia, the U.K., and, yes, even Romania. But there’s more to the story than just California’s business-hostile environment driving filming out of state.
Whether filmed in Los Angeles or Timbuktu, Americans increasingly won’t buy what Hollywood sells.
Netflix largely produces “second screen” content that people kinda-sorta watch while scrolling on their phones, and will pay for on an all-you-can-eat basis. But streamers produce very little that would otherwise draw people into theaters. What struck me most about Project Hail Mary — which hit the big screen on Friday to great reviews and awesome ticket sales — is how rare that kind of good-natured hit film is.
There is something tremendous about Project Hail Mary where it’s incredibly kid-friendly, but it’s not a kids movie. It’s the rare adult entertainment that kids can engage and they’ll never feel like it is talking down to them. https://t.co/xTHc3aFCaG
— PoIiMath (@politicalmath) March 22, 2026
I hope Project Hail Mary goes on to earn a gazillion dollars, and maybe even remind Hollywood that you don’t need capes, a sequel, or a reboot to produce a winner. Just a really good story that almost anyone can enjoy will do. We still love going to the movies, but Hollywood only sometimes remembers anymore how to get us to go.
Alas, the summer slate is filled — you guessed it — capes, sequels, and reboots. And, of course, more second-screen algorithm-pleasing slop from the Netflix content firehose.
The view from Flyover Country is that Hollywood committed suicide, and that Newsom and Bass just added a few shovels of dirt on top of the coffin.
Recommended: Are You Ready for the Dems’ 2028 Presidential Childhood Trauma Olympics?
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