MovieMaker
Hollywood Stars Urge Colleagues: #StayinLA
By Tim Molloy
January 28, 2025
Hollywood luminaries are asking their industry colleagues to #StayinLA — a hashtag and a calling — while urging California’s government to improve tax incentives for the entertainment industry.
A petition by the #StayinLA campaign has raised more than 15,000 signatures in just five days, and includes stars and industry leaders including Keanu Reeves, Rian Johnson, Bette Midler, Patty Jenkins, Joey King, Zooey Deschanel, Joshua Jackson, Olivia Wilde, Alex Winter, Kevin Bacon, Connie Britton, Charlie Hunnam, Sian Heder and Jason Reitman.
“The fires remind us that we are nothing without each other,” says Sarah Adina Smith, who conceived the plan and organized the petition with fellow filmmaker Alexandra Pechman. “Los Angeles is like no place else on Earth because of the people who live here — but they can’t afford to stay and rebuild without jobs.”
The pair worked with about 30 filmmakers and showrunners, including Nick Antosca, Julie Plec, Michael Suscy, and Alex Winter, partnering with in partnership with CA UNITED, a film and TV group dedicated to keeping productions in California.
“I’ve been a proud Angeleno for most of my adult life and have rarely been able to film in my hometown with the highly skilled crew that lives here,” says Winter, who starred with Reeves in the Bill & Ted films. “My latest feature film was just shot and posted in Canada. Their robust rebate was the only way to make our budget work.”
The coalition calls for the state to uncap the state’s tax incentive program — currently capped at $330 million per year — for the next three years for projects that shoot in Los Angeles County.
#StayinLA is also calling on studios and streamers to pledge to increase local production by at least 10 percent in that time.
Film Incentives Before #StayinLA
California’s current film tax incentive program is among the largest in the country, but Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed in November, before the fires, to raise the cap to $750 million, which would make California the top state for capped film incentive programs.
It would leapfrog competitors like New York, where the tax credit is funded at $700 million a year through 2034.
Los Angeles was already struggling before the fires, as Covid shutdowns and last year’s strikes slowed production in the nation’s film capital.
According to FilmLA, which coordinates film permits in Los Angeles, 2024 saw a 5.6 percent decline in production from the previous year, despite an uptick in production in the last quarter of the year. 2024 was also the second least productive year on record, according to the non-profit group; the only less productive year was 2020, when Covid shut down most productions.
The full impact of the fires remains to be seen, though the Los Angeles Times notes that they are likely to increase costs in many ways, and to hit Los Angeles-based workers the hardest. Caterers, for example, can’t usually just follow a production to Atlanta or Vancouver.
Below is a list of signees to the petition, provided by #StayinLA.
Actors:
Keanu Reeves
Kevin Bacon
Jane Levy
Bette Midler
Connie Britton
Alison Brie
Allison Janney
Sarah Michelle Gellar
Levar Burton
Julie Benz
Jack Huston
Kyra Sedgwick
Titus Welliver
Richard Kind
Aisha Tylor
Brenda Strong
Paget Brewster
Joshua Jackson
Jake Johnson
Josh Malina
Jeri Ryan
Rosemarie Dewitt
Abbi Jacobson
Troian Bellisario
Scoot McNairy
Garret Dillahunt
Aleksa Palladino
Rachel Bloom
Robin Wright
Kathryn Hahn
Charlie Hunnam
Filmmakers:
Rian Johnson
Olivia Wilde
Sian Heder
Patty Jenkins
Lilly Wachowski
Mike Flanagan
Jeremy Saulnier
Jason Reitman
Greg Yaitanes
Niki Caro
Rachel Morrison
Erin Lee Carr
Cord Jefferson
Destin Daniel Cretton
Kay Cannon
Reed Morano
John Logan
John Hillcoat
Emmanuel Lubezki
Michael Mann
Showrunners:
Francesca Sloane
Jen Statsky
Lucia Aniello
Bryan Fuller
Marlene King
Mara Brock Akil
Nikki Toscano
Ashley Lyle
LaToya Morgan
Liz Tigelaar
Marc Guggenheim
