For over a century, Hollywood has been more than just an industry, it has been the beating heart of global storytelling, the architect of dreams, and a cornerstone of modern culture. To speak of Hollywood was to speak of ambition, imagination, and the uniquely American idea that reinvention was always possible.
Today, that heart is under strain.
The latest data shows that film and television production in Los Angeles is at historic lows, with location shoots, pilot orders, and even music scoring sessions sharply down. While California still boasts the world's fourth-largest economy, the particular ecosystem of creativity, the interlocking community of writers, technicians, actors, designers, and craftspeople, faces real challenges to its survival.
This is not a sudden collapse, but a slow hollowing-out. Global competition from cities like Atlanta, London, Toronto, and Sydney, many of which offer aggressive financial incentives, has eroded California's once unchallenged dominance. Where Hollywood once stood alone, it now fights to remain one production hub among many.
It would be easy to frame this as simply a matter of economics. Tax credits, cheaper labor markets, and political inertia certainly play a role. But what’s at stake is deeper than lost revenue. Hollywood’s decline threatens a unique cultural infrastructure, an entire city built around the making of myths.
When we lose that infrastructure, we don't just lose jobs, we lose a living tradition of craftsmanship that connects the silent era to the streaming era, Chaplin to Chazelle. The “below-the-line” workers, the grips, carpenters, editors, costume designers, are not just employees; they are custodians of a generational knowledge base that cannot easily be rebuilt elsewhere.
The risk is not that Hollywood disappears altogether. It is that it becomes a brand name without a real community behind it, a Potemkin village of a cultural capital. If that happens, it would mirror a broader story we have seen elsewhere in American life: the slow displacement of middle-class creators by market forces they cannot control, and the resulting loss of collective memory and shared artistry.
We have seen this before. The decline of Detroit's auto industry was not just an economic story; it was a cultural one. Detroit once symbolised American ingenuity, strength, and the dignity of industrial labour. Its fall left a psychic wound that the city is still healing decades later. If not careful, Hollywood could face a similar fate, not as a deserted landscape, but as a diminished force in our shared cultural imagination.
And yet, there is still time.
California’s proposed expansions to film and TV tax credits, the resilience of its creative workers, and the deep-rooted infrastructure of studios and agencies offer a foundation for renewal. But renewal will require more than tax breaks. It will require leadership that values culture as more than a commodity, that sees the making of stories as vital work, deserving of investment, respect, and protection.
Hollywood's story has always been one of reinvention. The question is whether it can now reinvent itself in a way that preserves not just its profitability, but its cultural soul.
We should all care about the answer.
Because when the dream factory goes quiet, it’s not just Los Angeles that loses something, it’s all of us.