Hollywood's Great Escape: Why Movies Aren't Made in L.A. Anymore
In this episode, guest Chris Fenton, a longtime Hollywood executive and author, breaks down why more U.S. film productions are moving overseas. Once centered in Los Angeles, the industry is now filming in places like Vancouver, Eastern Europe, and South Africa—and it all comes down to economics.
Fenton explains how foreign governments offer generous tax incentives, rebates, and subsidies to attract big-budget movies. Countries are building modern sound stages, training local crews, and leveraging currency advantages—where the U.S. dollar stretches further—to reduce production costs. For example, North Carolina offers a 25% rebate on in-state film expenditures, which can return millions to studios.
These cost-saving incentives make filming abroad a no-brainer financially—but Fenton warns there’s a bigger issue: the loss of American film jobs and production control. He argues that making movies is no different from manufacturing—it fuels local economies and protects national interests. When production moves overseas, the U.S. loses not just jobs, but also cultural influence and creative control, especially in places like China where strict censorship is enforced.
The conversation raises a key question: Is Hollywood’s global shift worth the long-term cost to American industry and culture?
Transcript
Chuck Warren: Briefly, before we get into your article, I was watching a video clip on you. Was it ABC or CBS?
It's ABC, yeah.
ABC about the film industry and why we're shooting so much overseas, and Vancouver seems to be a hot spot, and then Eastern Europe. Explain to people basically why is that happening, because we all just think as we shot in L.A. as God intended it to do. What's going on there?
Chris Fenton: Yeah, the real problem is you have a bunch of different factors that come into play. Number one is you have these federal incentive programs or these national incentive programs across the world that are drawing our productions there because they're providing huge rebates, huge subsidies, huge economies of scale in order to bring these massive $200 million plus productions
to these countries. They're building sound stages. They're giving us all kinds of breaks in order to get the access to those sound stages. They've trained crews and above the line personnel. Actually, we did that and created our own competition around the world. And they're taking advantage of that because we can actually shoot movies for a real efficient price.
On top of that, we have Big currency issues where, for instance, you get $1.38 in Canada versus a dollar here. Or you have various other places like South Africa where their currency is quite a bit weaker even compared to Canada. So you can shoot all over the world.
We're trying to figure out a way to combine with these state incentives. North Carolina has a 25% rebate that helps keep productions here in the United States of America. If we can do a federal program that would help complament that and bring these competitors around the world back to a scale that we can start to evaluate and keep these movies here. Keep the television programing here. Its not just about California its really about the United States.
Chuck Warren: Right. So let me ask you this quick question and then I want to go on. You said a 25% rebate. Explain to our audience, what does that mean? That's just like tax credits. What does a 25% rebate mean for you?
Chris Fenton: Yeah. So the goal for North Carolina is for us to employ people there in the state. Right. If we employ, say, five million dollars worth of salaries, we would get a 25 percent rebate on that five million dollars spend that would then go into keeping costs down for the budget.
The reason that we like that is obviously we can make we can spend five million dollars, but actually get back, you know, one point two five or whatever that number is. It's a little early in the morning. It's very it's very smart for us in Hollywood. Now, the big issue for the U.S. is. Does this pay off?
Right. And if you look at it from the Trump perspective of trying to maintain manufacturing here in the United States of America, making a movie is the same thing as making shoes or automobiles. It's the same factor that he's trying to protect, which is American jobs,
American labor and this ability to control our economy in a more production capacity.
Chuck Warren: Thank you for the explanation. Did you ever watch the show Dirty Rock with Alec Baldwin?
Chris Fenton: Of course, yeah.
Chuck Warren: Remember the one where they had the tax credits from Connecticut for the horror movie? And it was by the Tourism Council, and they felt the murder was not a good reflection of Connecticut values.
Chris Fenton: Well, by the way, when we would do things in China, for instance, we were heavily patrolled to make sure anything in China was perfect.
Chuck Warren: Yeah, why not? All right. So we've got about three minutes left in this segment, and we'll go over to the next one as well.
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