The Great Hollywood Diaspora

CHICAGO — It takes a long linger over a film or TV show’s credits before you are likely to ever encounter Ellen White’s name. Yet she holds one of Hollywood’s most important jobs — and the future of an industry uniquely associated with Southern California for more than a century could hinge on it.

During a shoot in suburban Chicago last month, the chief executive of sustainability consultancy EcoFixr stood beside a neat row of receptacles marked “landfill,” “compost” and “mixed recycle” while the crew working on a Walgreens commercial finished its catered Mexican lunch. When it was time for the workers to clear their salsa-stained plates, White gently directed each toward the correct place to dispose of them.

She had been hired to help the crew comply with new standards established by the Illinois Film Office for projects seeking green certification, a designation that makes those already taking advantage of the state's Film Production Tax Credit Incentive Program eligible for an additional 5 percent tax credit. The production’s bottom line depended on whether the crew scraped the detritus of their carnitas and barbacoa tacos into the bin designated for compost.

That enticement — the first of its kind in the U.S. — may be the most ethically framed effort yet by a government angling to take advantage of what California calls a “runaway production” crisis: the exodus of film, television and commercial shoots from the longtime industry hub to other locales.

“We're coming after you, Colleen!” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker jokingly teased Colleen Bell, the executive director of the California Film Commission, when the two recently encountered each other, as she recalls it. “We're coming after you!”

For years, California officials agonized over rising competition from a few select locations in North America — first British Columbia, New Mexico and Louisiana, then Georgia, New York and others — that had made themselves viable alternatives to shooting in the so-called Thirty Mile Zone around Los Angeles’ studios. Now the playing field has expanded even further, with countries on every continent except Antarctica offering a menu of economic inducements that have studio accountants swooning over their spreadsheets. As of May, there were 120 such incentive programs around the world just from countries, states and provincial governments — a figure that doesn’t include subnational offerings like the Canary Islands’ incentives or Cape Town’s municipal film fund.

California has responded to the threat — which contributed to a loss of more than 42,000 film and television jobs in Los Angeles County between 2022 and 2024 — with an increased sense of urgency. Last year, lawmakers more than doubled the state’s Film & Television Tax Credit Program to $750 million, which is awarded annually to qualifying productions. This summer, however, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a new limitation on the state’s corporate tax credits that would undercut the production incentive.  

It all amounts to an existential crisis for the state’s leaders — one that this year’s candidates for governor and Los Angeles mayor confront as readily as those stumping in West Virginia grapple with questions over whether the coal mines will come back, or those in Michigan over whether the automotive assembly lines will ever roll again. Beneath the fight over tax incentives lies a larger question: whether the middle-class life that generations of Angelenos built working in Hollywood will soon become a thing of the past.

“There is a lot of pessimism right now — a lot of the industry employees feel very beaten down watching the exit of so many productions to other states and also overseas,” said Congressmember Laura Friedman, a Burbank Democrat who previously worked as a movie producer. “Thousands of people moved across the country and built their lives around the industry in LA. It gives Los Angeles so much of its identity, so much of its history. Watching the very rapid shrinkage of it … just feels overwhelming to a lot of my constituents.”

California lawmakers are now racing not only to ready a fix for Newsom’s tax credits restriction before the end of the legislative session later this month, but also to create two new standalone production incentives: one for commercials and another for post-production work. They are explicitly selling the proposals, which are forecast to result in modest annual reductions in state general fund revenue, as necessary for California to keep up with other jurisdictions now competing with one another as much as with Hollywood. Some locales have moved beyond straightforward tax credits to introduce creative policies like Illinois’ green incentive, which companies behind the $1.6 million Walgreens commercial had identified as a reason to shoot in Illinois.

“That really locked it in,” said Kylie Ruehl, managing director at TPC, a production financial services firm that consulted on the commercial, whose team had also considered filming in Georgia. “It's a big piece of why California and some of these other states that had a luxury of riches are having so much business go off to Illinois and some other states like it.”

For all of Los Angeles’ proprietary claim to show business, Chicago was helping build the American moviemaking machine well before the industry settled on Southern California as its home base.

In 1914, Charlie Chaplin signed with Chicago-based Essanay Studios, an early motion-picture outfit where, over the next year or so, he shot several silent films. But Chaplin soon split for a richer deal with Mutual Film Corp., which gave him his own studio in Los Angeles. It wasn’t just Chaplin: Drawn by abundant sunshine and varied landscapes ideal for moviemaking, Chicago film companies also shifted production west, among them Selig Polyscope and American Film Manufacturing Co.

Over the following decades, Hollywood became synonymous with film production, and a central part of California’s economy. The excellent climate and varied geography may have first drawn cinematographers’ attention, but from its earliest years the region also sustained economics friendly to filmmaking: inexpensive land and a growing pool of cheap labor, including skilled craftspeople and technicians needed for increasingly elaborate productions. After World War II, the region’s population and economy expanded dramatically, deepening the local labor pool and production infrastructure. By then, Hollywood had an incumbency advantage: Its Southland success was self-reinforcing, as ever more companies, workers, suppliers and financiers clustered there.

Over time, however, other areas wanted some of that business. New technologies, such as affordable digital camera systems that reduced reliance on film processing, made it easier to produce movies and television shows far from the confines of California’s vast production ecosystem. Among the first major beneficiaries of this decentralization were Vancouver and Toronto, which by the 1990s were competing for the “Hollywood North” nickname on the back of lower costs — partly the result of favorable exchange rates — and cityscapes that could convincingly double for American ones.

Competing provincial incentives made Canada increasingly attractive to American productions, and inspired U.S. states to develop similar programs of their own. Georgia, which launched its production incentive in 2005, quickly became a major player, drawing films and television shows to its soundstages via generous and flexible credits. Three years later, Georgia expanded its base credit to 20 percent and added a 10 percent bonus for projects that meet the state’s promotional requirements, which include displaying Georgia's logo in the finished product. The state soon began attracting major studio projects, including Marvel productions from Walt Disney Co.

By the time Illinois politicians, business and labor leaders became serious about developing a modern production ecosystem in the early 2000s, other jurisdictions had a significant head start. Illinois’ industry got a major boost in 2012, when the Dick Wolf-produced NBC procedural Chicago Fire began shooting there. It was soon followed by sister series Chicago P.D. and Chicago Med, helping establish the region as a reliable base for TV series. The trio is filmed at Cinespace Studios, a sprawling facility housed in a former steel plant in a working-class neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side.

“There’s gonna be a future here,” Tony Barracca, who worked on Chicago Fire as the production’s leadman, a key supervisor in the set decoration department, remembered telling himself at the start of the gig. Since then, “we have seen business get busier, so it’s got to be taking it from someone,” said Barracca, who is now business manager of International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 476.

In many ways, Illinois has become the sunny obverse of California, where years of policy drift squandered the state’s competitive advantage and left it playing catch-up. Illinois is now No. 6 among U.S. film and television production destinations, based on production volume and spending, according to an analysis of publicly available data by Entertainment Partners, a production-services company.

“We're the fifth-largest economy in the country. California is the largest economy in the country — and my job is to make us the fourth-largest in the country,” said Pritzker. “And film and TV is one of the places where we can do well.”

The primary engine of Illinois’ growth is the state’s film office, which is tucked into an unremarkable suite on the 12th floor of a drab government office building on Monroe Street in downtown Chicago.

On a recent afternoon, the phone in deputy director Peter Hawley’s windowless office wouldn't stop pinging. Over the course of an hour or so, the inquiries came from representatives of the Motion Picture Association, NBCUniversal and a producer working on a movie scheduled to shoot in college-town Champaign. There was no assistant screening his calls, no $8 latte perched on his desk — just a bureaucrat helping shepherd one of Illinois' fastest-growing industries.

“It is every man for themselves, and if Illinois wins out, great. Just from an ego standpoint, I want to be No. 1, right?” said Hawley, before adding, “I'm a big believer that a rising tide raises all boats. It would be great if we had a healthy, holistic film industry in the United States. It is very sad — all of the offshoring."

Film production in Illinois is booming — last year, the state gave out $210 million in incentives, helping generate $703 million in production spending — and Hawley has become one of the state’s chief ambassadors to the industry: part gatekeeper, part educator, part promoter and, when necessary, truth-teller. His job is to persuade studios and producers that Illinois can deliver what they need — and to make sure they understand exactly what the state’s incentive program can, and cannot, do.

“We’re growing incrementally,” said Hawley, 61, who is also an adjunct professor of film at Loyola University Chicago. “We're also not going to get to a place where we fall off a cliff."

Hawley, who joined the Illinois Film Office in 2019, helped craft Illinois’ expanded production incentive, which Pritzker signed into law last year. The overhaul increased the base credit from 30 percent to 35 percent on qualified Illinois spending — eligible in-state costs such as wages, equipment rentals and lodging — and added bonuses for green productions and television series that relocate to the state, among other changes. The uncapped program, whose credits can be applied against a production company’s or its owners’ Illinois income-tax liability and are transferable to other taxpayers, was also extended through 2038, allowing studios to make longer-range plans around it.

For Hawley, who also is a filmmaker, the green incentive grew out of both a longtime interest in environmental sustainability and frustration with the waste he saw over years spent on sets. “What really bothered me was watching trucks and trailers idle for 14 hours a day,” he said.

The program he designed requires productions to earn at least 70 out of 100 points on a sustainability scorecard. Some measures are relatively simple: donating or composting leftover food, using Energy Star-certified appliances, adopting paperless software and choosing low- or no-VOC paint, among others. But other measures require a larger financial investment and even a rethinking of how a production operates. Points can be earned, for example, by switching to LED lighting or eliminating the use of diesel generators — changes that, in some cases, upend longstanding on-set practices.

Productions must also prove they followed through. That requirement has created a new on-set function: sustainability verification. Companies such as White’s EcoFixr maintain a presence during shoots to ensure that “the goals that are being set in place are actually happening,” she said. “We’re collecting all of the evidence.” (The Chicago shows, which have long availed themselves of the state’s production incentive program, are expected to apply for the green credit, Hawley said.)

By stacking all of the program’s bonuses, among them those for relocating from another state and filming outside the Chicago metro area, a production shooting in Illinois could be eligible for a 50 percent incentive on qualified spending.

“No one,” Hawley said, “can touch that.”

Now Chicago has built out some of the ecosystem of soundstages and crews that once comprised Hollywood’s greatest advantage. Cinespace was also home to Chicago-set television shows Shameless, The Chi and The Bear, the last of which won 21 Emmy Awards over a five-season run that ended earlier this year.

And it’s not just Cinespace. Essanay Studio and Lighting Co. was created in the early 1980s, when an existing production-lighting rental business moved into the landmark property once occupied by the defunct Chaplin-era Essanay studio and rebranded itself in an homage to the original venture.

The modern Essanay left that site in 1996 for a two-stage facility on Chicago’s Goose Island, where, on a recent visit, both stages were in use: one for a Gatorade commercial and the other for a yet-to-be-released caffeinated candy.

The property, abuzz with production workers, was also laden with the equipment required for a modern shoot: $200,000 generators, $125,000 dollies, $2,000 light bulbs and $20 sash cord bundles. Essanay is investing in more environmentally friendly products — like $10,000 rechargeable battery packs — as it prepares for an expected increase in demand driven by the green credit, said Jim Shearer, a partner in the company and the studio’s general manager.

“Essanay has definitely served as a bridge to that earlier era,” said Shearer. “We do pay respect to the history of filmmaking in Chicago. We make sure we are cognizant of it and aware of the need to uphold it.”

For Friedman, whose congressional district includes several studios, the fight against runaway production is more than just tax policy. It is about preserving the kind of career that first drew her to Los Angeles.

After working in the film business in New York, Friedman moved west in 1992, where she landed at Paramount and built a career as a producer before segueing to politics in the late 2000s. “It was a super vibrant town,” she said. “It did create those middle-class opportunities — in the tens of thousands across Los Angeles.”

These days, though, people are “watching the rug get pulled out from underneath them because the industry has been shrinking and shrinking,” she said. “And there's worry that it will collapse. But I believe that we still have a chance to resurrect the industry, to retain it, and to build it out again.”

California remains the nation’s largest production hub. Projects awarded incentives during the first 14 months of the expanded program are projected to generate $7.2 billion in direct in-state production spending, according to the state’s film commission. Even so, elected officials have acknowledged that the incentive effectively excludes entire categories of work, including commercials, which are ineligible. Post-production work qualifies for the incentive only when it is performed on projects originally shot in California.

Lawmakers sought to address both shortcomings this year, but bills creating standalone incentives for each — including one that would dole out $15 million annually to qualified commercials that shoot in California — did not make Newsom's budget. Backers are hopeful the measures will advance before the state’s legislative session concludes, but their fate remains far from certain. That is especially true for the commercial incentive bill, which has stalled after failing to make it out of a fiscal committee — though its proponents insist they are still trying to find a way to move the legislation before lawmakers adjourn.

Matthew Miller, CEO of the Association of Independent Commercial Producers, said it’s been “extremely frustrating” that California has not had an incentive for commercials, arguing that the industry has been overshadowed by the larger film and television business.

“It was very hard to get the attention,” he said. “Now the commercials have really started declining there, and … they're finally paying attention.”

Joseph Chianese, a senior vice president at Entertainment Partners, where he advises companies on production incentives, attributed California's decline relative to other states with more lucrative tax credits to "competing resources.”

“There's a lot of people all fighting for the same dollar,” he said of California. “That's been the dilemma of basically people saying, ‘Well, what about the school budget? What about teachers?’ It's that problem.”

Competition from abroad — not just rival states — has prompted calls for a federal film tax incentive, an idea championed by President Donald Trump's Hollywood ambassador, Jon Voight, and one that Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has been quietly pursuing with a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers.

“If we act on a national film tax credit … we have a chance of remaining dominant in this important industry,” said Friedman, who is working on the effort. “But we have to act. It’s time that we take action at the national level.”

Those concerns are compounded by the prospect of mass layoffs following Paramount Skydance's proposed purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, as well as by subsequent threats by Paramount executives to move the company’s headquarters out of California amid an antitrust challenge to the deal led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

It could get worse. California's production incentive program was the subject of urgent appeals on the Assembly floor in late June. Lawmakers realized that a tax proposal promoted by Newsom — a measure to permanently limit the amount of credits that large companies could use to reduce what they owe the state — would unintentionally weaken the production incentive passed just a year earlier by forcing studios to either carry credits forward or accept a discounted refund spread over five years.

“This is not a minor policy change in the budget,” Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur, co-author of last year's legislation expanding the state's production incentive program, said in a June 30 floor speech. “These changes will result in significant job loss to other states, and we must not let this industry fail.”

If the legislation is not amended, the new rule — which caps a company’s credits at $5 million or a certain percentage of its annual tax bill, whichever is greater — would take effect in 2030. Zbur and other lawmakers are now working on legislation that would exempt the production incentive program from Newsom’s tax proposal, but the effort’s fate is uncertain. Friedman, who formerly served in the state assembly, said that “fixing this should be the Legislature's No. 1 issue.”

“It's that important,” she said. “What happens in Los Angeles should concern every member of the Legislature, regardless of where their district is. They need to get on this right away. They can't be complacent.”

A FilmLA report released in late July underscored the urgency: On-location shooting in the Los Angeles area fell 12.7 percent compared to the same three-month stretch a year earlier.

Asked about the tax credits controversy, Newsom spokesperson Marissa Saldivar did not say whether the governor aimed to exempt the production incentive. “The tax credit limitation is part of a broader fiscal proposal to ensure the state can continue making strategic investments while maintaining long-term fiscal stability,” she said. “We remain confident in the strength of the recently expanded Film & Television Tax Credit Program.”

But the juxtaposition was striking: While California lawmakers wrestled with the status of the state’s incentive program, more than 25 films, television shows and commercials were, over the course of a week in early July, either in production or preparing to shoot in Illinois. Among them was the Walgreens commercial crew. They weren’t just making an ad. They were composting.

The leafy residential street in the Chicago suburbs hosting the Walgreens shoot had everything Los Angeles could offer, except for the weather.

A block-long stretch of Bonnie Brae Place in Oak Park was lined with trucks and trailers, thick cables snaking beneath yellow protective ramps like sinew. Racks of costumes crowded a grassy parkway, where child actors on a break lounged in folding chairs. Curious neighbors walking their dogs threaded through a stream of crew members — lighting technicians, grips, set dressers, stylists — huffing in 89-degree heat as they hustled to and from the stately brick home serving as the set.

“This would be our most humid day of the summer,” said Greg Grill, a production supervisor who had come from his Los Angeles home for the shoot. He said he would prefer it if he didn’t have to travel to Illinois for work, and there was a time when he said he “could have picked and chosen” which jobs to take — and would have turned down this gig. “Before,” he explained, “I would have said, ‘No, not a chance!’”

These days, however, he’s even taking jobs — such as the Walgreens commercial — that require him to pay his own travel expenses. He’s doing so, in part, because he needs to work a minimum number of hours to maintain the health insurance offered via his International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees local. His wife is a cancer survivor, so keeping that coverage is especially important.

“If I don’t get to a certain number of hours by September, I’m screwed,” he said. “I’ve got to figure it out.”

Sweating in the driveway of the home that served as the set, Grill was surrounded by the very ecosystem California is trying to keep from slipping away. After lunch, the commercial’s production team prepared to resume shooting. The lighting crew finished its adjustments, and one technician fine-tuned a spotlight hidden among the hedges. Beneath the porte cochère, crew members massed amid a cluster of rolling carts and tool chests.

Yet for all the bustle, the shoot had the intimacy of a small town. The same companies and crew members turn up again and again across Illinois productions, a reflection of an industry that remains relatively small.

One of the vehicles — a 10-ton truck filled with lighting, electrical and grip equipment — had been rented from Essanay. And nearby, White, the EcoFixr executive, sorted materials bound for recycling. Hawley was there, too, appearing to know everyone. Part of the reason, he said, is that every production seeking Illinois' tax credit passes through his office. But his reach extends further. In 2021, his office launched the Illinois Film and TV Workforce Training Program, which has cultivated a new generation of crew members. Between that effort and his Loyola University Chicago professorship, Hawley has become a mentor to many entering the business.

"The call sheets of these shows are littered with former students of mine," he said. "It gives me great pride — I want young people in Illinois to get into the film industry."

Yet even those in Illinois who have worked to bring productions like the Walgreens commercial are aware of the consequences of trying too hard. They point to Georgia as a reminder that attracting business is only part of the equation.

By the early 2010s, Georgia had become known as the "Hollywood of the South," luring movie and TV shoots with an uncapped tax credit that placed no overall limit on how much it could award qualifying projects. But in recent years, production has migrated elsewhere — including to the United Kingdom, where Marvel now films many of its biggest projects. Georgia, where production spending fell from roughly $4.4 billion in fiscal 2022 to $2.3 billion in fiscal 2025, has been left with empty soundstages and out-of-work crews.

The downturn has exposed longstanding criticisms of Georgia's incentive program. Some politicians and policy researchers have argued, for example, that it has done too little to prioritize the in-state workforce, allowing many jobs to go to out-of-state workers. To Pritzker, Georgia's model is a cautionary tale.

"Their tax credits really are massive giveaways," he said. "And it's been very successful — if your goal is simply to have more productions there. But it's not worthwhile to me if the state isn't, in the end, benefiting from having those productions done in Illinois.”