For 10 years, Joe Gallegos Jr. lived the life of an LA actor, driving from audition to audition across the sprawling city in the hopes of landing a role. Things were going well — he'd landed a role in "A Cowgirl's Story," a military drama starring Bailee Madison, the "Dance Moms" star Chloé Lukasiak, and Pat Boone, and he was starting to read for bigger projects.
That all changed a few years ago when a film role brought him back to his native New Mexico. He was close to family for the first time in years, and the film industry there was burgeoning. When the movie wrapped, instead of sprinting back to Los Angeles, Gallegos realized he didn't have to go back. The pandemic had shifted from in-person to on-tape. He's since earned acting credits in TV shows like "Pulse," a medical procedural on Netflix; and "Duster," a JJ Abrams drama on HBO Max — both of which filmed in New Mexico. The money he's made from those gigs and a few independent projects made it possible for Gallegos to buy a townhouse in downtown Albuquerque — something he'd never come close to being able to afford in La La Land.
"It's been a good decision because, as an actor, I can be literally anywhere in the world now," he told me.
Lately, creative workers are increasingly chasing their Hollywood dreams in production hubs far from Hollywood. LA continues to hold the lion's share of film and TV jobs in America, but after a long grind of jobs slowly slipping away, the exodus from the city has accelerated in recent years. A recent analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics figures conducted by Patrick Adler and Taner Osman of Westwood Economics & Planning Associates found that the figure was 22% in August, down from about 33% two years earlier.
So what's making actors, executives, and studios look beyond the Hollywood sign? Some factors aren't new. Most notably, states have long used financial incentives to try to lure film investment away from California. But those incentives helped establish an infrastructure across the US — with top-notch sound stages being built in cities as varied as Dallas, Atlanta, and Miami — that was ready and waiting when the pandemic-era rise of remote work gave those seeking a lower cost of living a real choice in deciding where to live. Add it all up, and it seems that the glitz and glam of Hollywood is struggling to keep up with simple dollars and cents.
The filmed entertainment industry's center of gravity is shifting further from Hollywood at a time of upheaval. The decadelong shift to streaming was exacerbated by the pandemic, which stalled, then boosted, production as people stayed inside and became couch potatoes. Peak TV came to a halt in 2022 when networks, studios, and streamers couldn't make the financial math for all those new streaming shows work. And filming was shut down once again in 2023 because of the Hollywood actors and writers strikes.
When projects slowly got back on their feet, fewer of them were turning their lights on in LA. FilmLA, which issues permits for production in the region, found that Greater Los Angeles' share of US-produced TV and film projects declined from 23% in 2021 to 18% last year. The number of people employed in the traditional entertainment industry in LA, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hit a 30-year low in June. At the same time, jobs related to video gaming, live events, and the creator economy rose in the city as people's media diet shifted toward social video and away from traditional TV and movies.
The biggest reason that productions are looking elsewhere is cost. The wage gains made by the actors and writers have increased budgets for talent, leading producers to hunt for ways to drive down outlays in other areas — including locations. Thirty-seven states offer perks for film and TV production — typically in the form of tax credits equal to a percentage of a production's in-state spending, or cash rebates — and at least 18 states have implemented or expanded film tax incentives since 2021. Georgia boosted its incentive program in 2008, helping attract big-budget films like Disney's Marvel franchise and the Netflix hit "Stranger Things." Atlanta's share of entertainment employment is still relatively small — just 2%, according to the Otis Report on the Creative Economy, a closely-watched research study — but that has doubled over the past decade and shows no sign of slowing.
As productions move out of Los Angeles, it becomes easier for others to follow. Tiffany FitzHenry, an executive producer known for "Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot," has seen the Atlanta area evolve since relocating there from LA in 2009.
"We have training for not just below the line but people in producing, packaging, financing," she told me, adding that the shift in major studio movies to the city had brought with it the structures needed to sustain a more permanent workforce.
"The biggest movies have been made here for the past 15 years," she said. "We have all the toys and tools at our fingertips."
Other states are getting in on the action. Kentucky passed an incentive program in 2022 offering fully refundable production tax credits worth up to $75 million total or $10 million a project. Its second-largest city, Lexington, recently hired the entertainment marketer Lisa Brin, a Lexington native, to help persuade studios to shoot there. Brin said Lexington had attracted 30 film and TV projects so far this year, representing more than $2 million in local spending. In addition to the financial incentives, the city touts production spaces like Lex Studios, a facility with three sound stages, a growing crew base, and a willingness to pull strings as they did for a recent production that requested a major street to be closed for a shoot.
In addition to luring productions, these areas are also trying to make it more appealing for creatives to stick around once the cameras shut off. Georgia and Kentucky are among states that have invested in training programs to foster homegrown talent and initiatives like FilmLex as a resource hub to help productions. For transplants, it's cheaper to live and raise a family outside LA as well as New York, the second-biggest entertainment market. And while jobs and the cost of living might be the primary reasons people move, the proliferation of cultural amenities in many smaller cities makes it easier for them to stay.
So there is more of a talent base globally in places like Ireland, Budapest, South Africa, and the UK.
26 Keys, a production founded by Noah Hawley, an Austin native who created FX's "Fargo" series, is taking steps to build up Austin's entertainment cultural capital, with plans for a library, events like industry happy hours, and film screenings, working with organizations like the Austin Film Society and South by Southwest. "I just don't think there's a real sort of hub that's trying to connect them," said Maddy Bilder, a project director at 26 Keys. "That's what we're hoping to do here."
It's not just other parts of the US that are drawing film crews away from LA; other countries are trying to win over Hollywood as well. Hungary, with a 20-year-old tax rebate and access to culture and an expanding stage system, was recently the setting for Yorgos Lanthimos' "Poor Things." Australia nearly doubled its location tax credit to 30% this summer after big-budget titles like the Sony Pictures rom-com "Anyone but You" and the Universal Pictures comedy "The Fall Guy," which starred Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, were shot there. Roughly 60% of Netflix's and Amazon's commissions in the first half of this year were on continents other than North America, according to Ampere Analysis.
"I know of producers, senior production people, moving to places like Australia or working in Hungary," said Tyler Mitchell, the CEO of Impact, a LinkedIn-like platform for Hollywood. "In the UK, Australia, the governments have supported a lot of education, training, to make sure as they built up production facilities, they had enough crew to service sound stages. So there is more of a talent base globally in places like Ireland, Budapest, South Africa, and the UK. I've heard of more productions in Saudi Arabia looking for crew than I ever have."
Actually being on a set is only one part of entertainment production. Development, preproduction, and postproduction are responsible for a huge portion of what ends up on screen. But here, too, the need to physically be in the mecca of moviemaking is waning. Technology is giving rise to a Tinseltown version of remote work.
Self-tapes, where actors use ring lights and film themselves at home to connect with casting directors, have become commonplace. Many meetings to pitch projects that shifted to Zoom early in the pandemic have stayed on video. On the postproduction side, file sharing and editing platforms like Pix and ScreenIt Pro enable production companies like 26 Keys to review content locally rather than fly to editing rooms in LA.
"A lot of pitch meetings are happening over Zoom, four years later," Bilder said.
While the power of Los Angeles is dispersing, no single "new Hollywood" is coming to take its place. The end of Peak TV has contracted employment all over — the total number of jobs in the industry, at 447,000, declined 9.1% from 2013 to 2024. Even as markets like Atlanta and Miami grow, their homegrown entertainment encampments have a long way to match the hundred-year history of LA — the most valuable parts of the supply chain, like casting big stars, greenlighting, and packaging, are still concentrated in the city.
"There's high stakes there. This is an area where trust matters," said Adler, the principal at Westwood, which conducted research for the Otis report. "You built it through face-to-face interaction, repeated exchanges. That's why casting for top roles still happens in LA, even if they end up being shot elsewhere."
For those who are just starting out or who work on the creative side, too, Hollywood is still where careers are made and nurtured. FitzHenry wishes there were more directors and producers with packaging and marketing skills in Georgia. "It's a skill set that hasn't been outside of Hollywood," she said. "Currently, the only way to learn is for a producer to adopt and teach you. I was lucky to work with highly skilled producers, which I learned in LA, like an oral tradition. That's a lot of relational capital that needs to be established."
There used to be that mentality of, you have to be in Hollywood to be in the business. I think that's changing
Keisha Perry, a longtime entertainment attorney in Atlanta whose clients have included Cedric the Entertainer's production company and the movie "The Waterboyz," said that being a local attorney had made it easier to connect with the growing number of productions taking place in the South but that she still traveled to LA regularly.
"The reality is, a lot of the decision-makers are in LA," she said. "There are those people who feel as though if you're not in LA, your legitimacy can be questioned."
Further evidence of LA's staying power is in the industries like video games, marketing, and the creator economy that are concentrated there because of the city's legacy in entertainment, which has endured through the rise of radio, then TV, then streaming. That may not necessarily lead to more TV shows and films being made there, but it underscores The Town's cultural importance.
Gallegos estimates that he still gets half his work from outside New Mexico, helped by representation he has in LA. "The reality is, major roles are not cast here and often not shot here," he said. For all the perks, he misses the excitement of being in LA. "There's stuff happening 24/7. I'm a trained dancer, too. I could always jump into something." Then there's the nagging feeling that virtual auditions don't count. "Sometimes I think I'm sending things out into the void that don't get watched."
Despite the similar professional gaps she sees, FitzHenry remains deeply rooted in Atlanta. She's found an affordable, friendly place to raise her kids and a tight-knit professional community that pulls together to help bring projects to the state, things she never experienced in LA.
"There's a sense people really care about each other," she said. "There used to be that mentality of, you have to be in Hollywood to be in the business. I think that's changing."
Lucia Moses is a senior correspondent covering the intersection of tech and Hollywood for Business Insider's Media team.