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<\/p>\nLos Angeles\u2019 once\u2011booming studio real estate machine is grinding through its harshest reset in years as sluggish production levels, rising costs and a glut of newly built stages collide to squeeze owners from every direction.<\/p>\n
Yet many of the city\u2019s biggest players insist the downturn is survivable, not existential \u2014 if they can adapt faster than the turbulence reshaping the industry.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Bisnow\/Bianca Barrag\u00e1n\n <\/p>\n
\n Former Netflix executive Keith Donovan, Bell Design Group\u2019s Tima Bell, The Fields Studios\u2019 Shawn Papazian, East End Capital\u2019s Shep Wainwright and The Lot at Formosa\u2019s Markley Lumpkins\n <\/p>\n
“It’s a highly challenged environment right now,” East End Capital<\/a> Managing Partner Shep Wainwright told the audience at Bisnow’s Studio Real Estate Conference on June 16.\u00a0<\/p>\n East End completed East End Studios Mission, a 300K SF soundstage facility along the Los Angeles River in Boyle Heights, earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n “There’s just a massive reset basis that’s happening right now, so there’s just a ton of pain,” Wainwright added.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite a state-level tax incentive passed to help boost productions in California, filming has been slow to pick up. For some,\u00a0the tax credit simply wasn\u2019t enough, speakers said at the event at\u00a0The Lot in West Hollywood<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n “What we’re challenged by right now is LA is operating in a noncompetitive basis because the legislature and the government hasn’t really supported the industry like other places have,” Hackman Capital<\/a> CEO Michael Hackman<\/a> said.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is\u00a0more cost-effective\u00a0for American game shows to fly productions, including audience members, to his studios in Ireland than it is to film those same shows in LA, Hackman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n “We just live in a more expensive place to do business,” Hackman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Other studio owners and developers\u00a0weren’t so sure that the biggest issue facing studio demand was something that could be worked out legislatively, pointing the finger instead to\u00a0an excess of soundstages.<\/p>\n “I\u00a0think part of the problem is we overbuilt the market, which is why we have this issue,”\u00a0Worthe Real Estate Group CEO\u00a0Jeff Worthe<\/a>\u00a0said, referring to the supply-demand imbalance that has led to trouble for owners of soundstages.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shoot days peaked in 2018, and soundstage occupancy peaked in 2016, according to FilmLA<\/a>. Annual shoot days\u00a0in 2025\u00a0were lower<\/a>\u00a0than they were during\u00a0the pandemic, when productions were halted. This year has followed the trend, with\u00a0shoot days in LA County\u00a0down 3.3%<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0the first quarter\u00a0compared to the same period in 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n While at least three\u00a0studio owners agreed that soundstage real estate had more supply than it needed, at least one owner saw the effects of that playing out differently throughout their portfolio.\u00a0<\/p>\n Location still matters,\u00a0Hudson Pacific Properties<\/a>\u00a0Executive Vice President of Studios Stefanie Bourne\u00a0said,\u00a0adding that Hudson Pacific’s centrally located Hollywood soundstages are fully leased.\u00a0<\/p>\n “That experience of lower demand within what is certainly an oversupplied market has been realized somewhat kind of unevenly,”\u00a0Bourne\u00a0said.<\/p>\n One bright spot that developers of these spaces\u00a0highlighted was that the climate for soundstage real estate has largely pumped the brakes on new construction, which they felt would address the oversupply issue and ultimately work in the favor of those who were left standing.<\/p>\n “I think the singular operative word right now is adapt, pivot and be prepared for change,”\u00a0Occidental Entertainment Group Holdings CEO Craig Darian\u00a0said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n To that point, some owners shared creative ways they rented their spaces, including hosting live concerts and locking in smaller, independent productions like microdramas<\/a>, or vertical-video dramas with episodes that last just a couple of minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n The\u00a0growing presence of AI in the market stirred\u00a0cautious optimism in industry figures. Although initially thought to be a harbinger of doom for the traditional entertainment industry, soundstage owners and operators saw the technology as yet another way they could win if they could roll with the punches.\u00a0<\/p>\n