Is rewarding film and entertainment companies for not leaving California a good idea?
As a kid, I’d get excited anytime I saw San Diego as a backdrop for a movie or TV show. Our fair city never got the attention it deserved. You feel that way growing up in San Diego, still today.
My earliest memory of spotting San Diego in TV shows and movies was 1978’s “Eight is Enough.” When the little boy runs away to San Diego, I remember pointing to our new color TV set with disbelief: “No way, that’s Crystal Pier.” On the heels of “Eight is Enough,” San Diego seemed to get its proper due with detective show “Simon and Simon,” which was set and filmed in San Diego.
Finally!
But it was to be short-lived.
After the first year, reportedly to reduce costs, they pulled the plugs and sent the crew back to Los Angeles, where the show would be filmed for the next few years—San Diego still there but just a façade, unbeknownst, I’d imagine, to millions of viewers.
Since then, there’s been a number of Hollywood productions filmed in San Diego; the rarity is gone. Movies not only filmed here but in which San Diego is central to the story include “Top Gun,” Almost Famous,” “Anchorman,” among others.
California First?
Nowadays, if they agree to film and produce their movie or TV show in California, privately-held film and entertainment companies can receive state taxpayer dollars. Earlier this month, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that in 2025 the state would use $109 million in tax credits to incentivize and reward film and entertainment companies for making their product on California soil.
The California Film Commission has already selected ten movie and television projects for this latest round of tax credits. The recipient projects include “Bad Monkey” from Warner Bros. Discovery, which shot its first season in Florida but will move filming and production to California for its second season; and, “Imperfect Women” from 20th Television, starring and produced by Elisabeth Moss and Kerry Washington.
It’s not clear if any of these projects will be filmed locally and benefit the San Diego economy, but it seems likely. Last year, tax credit-awarded projects “The Battle of Baktan Cross,” a Warner Brothers Studios’ production starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and Apple’s “Way of the Warrior Kid,” featuring Chris Pratt, were filmed in San Diego. This is good San Diego news.
Streamlined San Diego
Christina Chadwick, Executive Director of the City of San Diego’s Office of Special Events & Filming, told S-Reporter that, “Hollywood has taken notice of our variety of locales and continues to venture south.”
In 2024, film and TV production companies were particularly visible in San Diego, accumulating the “most on-location filming days locally in over 15 years,” Chadwick told San Diego news site S-Reporter.
The city attributes this in part to companies taking “advantage of our streamlined processes and film-friendly attitude,” says Chadwick; an example would be the city’s policy of waiving permit and application fees for film projects shot in San Diego, which saves companies time and money. In 2021, San Diego was selected by MovieMaker Magazine as one of the best cities for moviemakers to live and work.
The ten film projects receiving this latest round of state tax credits are expected, together, “to generate $509 million in qualified California expenditures, support local businesses and create 3,583 cast and crew jobs,” said Colleen Bell, director of the California Film Commission, adding that “the impact goes beyond the entertainment industry – it supports families, local businesses, and communities statewide.”
Some may view it as an example of corporate welfare.
But the fact that movies are job creators injecting direct and indirect revenues into the economy means we probably need them more than they need us.
Pay to Stay
The potential economic benefits for the state, for the people, would seem to outweigh the costs involved in paying them – or incentivizing them, if you prefer – to stay here.
Still, what does that say about Hollywood film companies when they must be financially coaxed to “make” their products in California?
They know we need them more than they need us. The threat of leaving gives them power. Some would say film companies would be a fool not to “leverage” their power.
You’ve probably heard of pay-to-play. This is pay-to-stay.
For better or worse, it’s a reminder that we live in a capitalist society, where companies – even those with a historical and cultural connection to the local region and its people – exist to maximize profit, wherever that takes them.
If the Chargers could leave San Diego, then no bond is sacred.
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