Hollywood on Life Support: Hilton Offers Tax Breaks While Becerra Offers More Bureaucracy

With the November 2026 gubernatorial election looming, the two leading candidates, Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton, offer starkly different visions for revamping the dying film industry and reversing the Hollywood exodus from southern California. One wants to compete on cost. The other wants to hold meetings and demand more paperwork.

Southern California’s film and television industry was once the golden engine of the state’s economy and cultural identity, but it is currently in free fall. According to FilmLA, the nonprofit that tracks production permits, Los Angeles-area filming days plunged 22 percent in 2024 alone. On-location production dropped another 22.4 percent in the first quarter of 2025. Television shoot days in Greater Los Angeles have cratered 58 percent since their 2021 peak, falling from 18,560 to just 7,716. Soundstage occupancy, historically above 90 percent, sank to 69 percent in 2023 and 63 percent in 2024.

All of that loss of production also comes with a brutal human cost in jobs. According to the nonprofit think tank the Milken Institute, roughly 51,000 production jobs were lost in the past three years, concentrated in behind-the-scenes roles. Jobs like grips, electricians, camera operators, set dressers, PAs, and drivers that form the backbone of middle-class Hollywood have dwindled to abysmal numbers.

This isn’t a temporary dip caused by the 2023 strikes or streaming consolidation. It’s structural: sky-high taxes, crushing regulations, permitting nightmares, and aggressive incentives from Georgia, Canada, and other jurisdictions that have been poaching productions for years. California’s own $750 million annual film and TV tax credit, capped and often delivering only 35–45 percent, has become a pale shadow of the competition. The result is an industry that built Los Angeles being pushed out of its own home.

Steve Hilton, the Trump-endorsed Republican and former Fox News host, has a straightforward, pro-growth plan: dramatically expand California’s entertainment tax credit to as high as 60 percent for qualifying productions, with a floor of at least 40 percent. He would remove the $750 million annual cap, make post-production and above-the-line expenses eligible, and work with a Republican White House to layer on federal incentives. The goal, Hilton says, is to make shooting in California “almost free” while sending an unmistakable signal that the state is open for business again. It’s not charity for studios. It is a targeted tax cut to bring jobs, economic activity, and tax revenue back home. As Hilton has noted, this isn’t a “temporary slowdown”; it’s “one of California’s signature industries being pushed out of its own homeland, taking its toll on good, middle-class jobs.”

Even The Hollywood Reporter—hardly a conservative mouthpiece—acknowledges that Hilton’s approach appears far better suited to the future of Hollywood. In its recent analysis of the candidates’ plans, the industry bible contrasts Hilton’s aggressive, production-focused incentives with the alternative and highlights the dire reality facing the state: without bold financial relief, productions will keep fleeing to cheaper locales.

Xavier Becerra, the Democratic frontrunner and former state attorney general and Biden HHS secretary, offers something far less compelling. His plan starts by defending the existing $750 million tax credit as “the floor” and promises to “expand” it, guided by “ongoing assessment of where we are losing work” in areas like post-production, VFX, indie films, and episodic television. There are no specific percentage increases, no commitment to uncap the program, and no embrace of above-the-line credits that producers actually want. Instead, Becerra pushes a “California Content Performance Disclosure requirement” forcing streamers and studios to hand over standardized performance data to directors and crew so they can “bargain fairly.” He also proposes a “California Entertainment Summit” and vows to cut some bureaucratic red tape on permits while strengthening “state-local incentive structures.”

In practice, Becerra’s agenda is classic Sacramento: more process, more union-friendly mandates, more worthless tax-funded studies, and more government oversight dressed up as worker empowerment. The disclosure rule would add compliance costs and friction for studios already hemorrhaging money on mid-budget projects. The “summit” and data-driven tweaks to credits sound responsible but amount to incrementalism at a time when Georgia and others are offering uncapped, aggressive deals.

Becerra’s allergy to “lavish tax benefits” ignores basic economics. When competitors are cheaper by 20–30 percent or more, tweaking the margins and demanding transparency reports goes nowhere. Making California competitive again is the only way to win back some of the fleeing industry this area was built on. Or California can watch as the jobs keep leaving. His approach protects entrenched interests and union priorities at the expense of actually getting cameras rolling. It’s futile theater for an industry that needs oxygen, not another layer of bureaucracy.

The contrast couldn’t be clearer. Hilton is betting on incentives that have worked in other states—aggressive, immediate, and production-first. Becerra is betting on the same regulatory mindset that helped create the problem. Hollywood, long a Democratic stronghold, now faces a brutal choice: ideological comfort or economic survival.

The data don’t lie. Southern California’s entertainment sector isn’t coming back without substantive change. It will take decisive leadership that treats film and TV as the vital economic engine it still is, rather than a captive constituency to be placated with summits and disclosure forms. Steve Hilton’s tax-break strategy offers a genuine path to revival. Xavier Becerra’s plan offers more of the same slow bleed.

California voters, especially those in the industry whose livelihoods are on the line, should take note. The future of Hollywood in its historic home may well depend on whether they choose competition over complacency.