After years of runaway production — studios fleeing to Georgia, New Mexico, Canada, and the UK for cheaper tax credits — something is shifting in Hollywood. California is fighting back, and some of the biggest names in the business are responding.

The state expanded its film and television tax credit program significantly in 2025, raising the annual cap and broadening eligibility to attract more big-budget productions back to Los Angeles. The results are starting to show. Universal, Warner Bros., and Disney have all announced major productions returning to California lots and LA locations for 2026 and 2027. The Fast and Furious finale — Fast 11, set for April 2027 — will film extensively in Los Angeles, with Vin Diesel specifically citing a desire to bring the franchise home after years of shooting abroad.

The LA Fires and the Industry That Survived Them

It would be impossible to talk about Hollywood in 2026 without acknowledging January 2025, when the most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history tore through Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and surrounding communities. Hundreds of industry workers lost their homes. Production facilities were threatened. The psychological toll on a city already exhausted from years of pandemic, strikes, and economic uncertainty was immense.

But Hollywood didn't leave. If anything, the fires accelerated a sense of community and recommitment to the city. Benefit concerts, industry fundraisers, and studio employee relief funds raised hundreds of millions of dollars for displaced workers and residents. Productions that had been considering out-of-state moves reconsidered. There is something about a crisis that clarifies what actually matters — and what matters to the film industry, it turns out, is Los Angeles.

Streaming Wars: California's Quiet Dominance

Netflix, Amazon, Apple, and Disney+ are all headquartered in California. The streaming era, for all its disruption to traditional Hollywood economics, has been enormously good for the state's creative economy. California-based streamers collectively employ tens of thousands of writers, directors, actors, crew members, and support staff, and the production volume required to feed streaming platforms has kept soundstages and post-production houses busier than they've ever been.

The 2023 writers and actors strikes — which shut down Hollywood for most of that year — won significant protections around AI use in productions and improved residual structures for streaming content. Those deals, negotiated by California-based unions, set the standard for the entire industry nationwide.

Music: California Still Runs It

Los Angeles remains the undisputed capital of the American music industry. The Recording Academy is based here. The Grammy Awards are held here. Coachella, now in its third decade, draws 125,000 people per weekend to the desert east of LA and generates hundreds of millions in economic activity for the Inland Empire and the Coachella Valley every April.

The live music economy in California bounced back dramatically from the pandemic, and venues from the Hollywood Bowl to the Kia Forum to Chase Center in San Francisco are selling out consistently. California artists continue to dominate pop, hip-hop, Latin music, and country — yes, country, with Kern County and Bakersfield maintaining a legitimate claim to the genre's roots that Nashville doesn't like to talk about.

What's Coming

The back half of 2026 is shaping up to be a big one for California entertainment. Fast 11 is in production. Several major Marvel projects are filming in LA. Award season buzz is already building around California-set films from major directors. And the FIFA World Cup, playing out across American cities this summer, has Los Angeles hosting multiple matches at SoFi Stadium — giving the entertainment infrastructure here a global stage it rarely gets outside of the Oscars.

Hollywood has been declared dead so many times it's become a cliché. Every year somebody writes the obituary. Every year the lights on the lots stay on. California's entertainment industry is not dying. It's adapting — and it's still the center of the world.