Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass doesn’t show up for the grand openings of many local businesses. But early Monday morning she trekked all the way out to the northwestern edge of the city, more than 25 miles from City Hall, to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremonies for Cinespace’s new studio complex in Woodland Hills. If there was any doubt as to why she made the effort, she cleared that up when she stepped behind the podium on Stage 1 and greeted the press and other assembled guests with her signature toothy grin.
“When we invest in the [entertainment] industry, the industry invests in Los Angeles, and I think it’s important that we always educate Angelenos to all of the ways the industry impacts our economy, all of the ancillary businesses, and all of the economic growth that happens when industry stays here and films here,” said Bass, who also attended the opening of East End Studios’ new Mission Campus in L.A.’s Arts District back in January.
Built inside the shell of the former headquarters and manufacturing facility for Catalina Yachts, the new 180,000-square-foot Cinespace campus boasts six 18,000-square-foot soundstages with 30-foot clearances, along with 72,000 square feet of production offices and support space. The complex’s first tenant, the thriller “Nightwatching,” starring Mila Kunis, has been shooting on Stages 2 and 3 since early February, and on Monday the production had also commandeered one of the lunch rooms to rehearse a stunt sequence.
Speaking to Variety following the ribbon-cutting, Cinespace Studios co-CEO Eoin Egan explained that when the company – which also has production campuses in Chicago, Toronto, Atlanta, Wilmington, North Carolina, and Germany – began looking for a site in Los Angeles around 2022, it wanted a place where they could establish a turnkey “one-stop shop,” where “we don’t have parking down the street.”
Egan got all that and more. Cinespace Studios Los Angeles is located in a bustling retail district on one of the Valley’s major thoroughfares, Victory Blvd. Across the street is a mini-mall with tenants that include a deli, a liquor store, a nail salon, a chiropractor, and a foot and body massage business. Directly behind the studio is a Home Depot, which “productions are in and out of all the time for everything from gaffer’s tape to toilet paper to lumber,” said Egan, who also noted that crew members reguarly patronize the nearby B.J.’s Restaurant & Brewhouse location.
The San Fernando Valley may not be where Hollywood’s cool kids hang out, but despite the confusing constellation of names given to various sections (North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, Encino, Northridge, etc.), most of it is part of the City of Los Angeles. More importantly, a wealth of talent makes its home on this side of “the hill” (aka, the Santa Monica Mountains), particularly the below-the-line variety.
“Heads of department tend to live here in the West Valley and in [nearby] Studio City, so we’re seeing those synergies and it’s already been an added value,” said Egan.
The surrounding neighborhood is no stranger to production. Another one of the day’s speakers, L.A. City Councilman Bob Blumenfield, pointed out that Cinespace Studios Los Angeles sits on land that was once part of Warner Ranch, where numerous Westerns shot back in the ‘30s and ‘40s. More recently, the suburban developments that replaced it in the 1950s onward have served as locations for projects ranging from “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to various Paul Thomas Anderson movies, including 2021’s “Licorice Pizza.” The facilities are also about two miles northwest of the former site of the RKO Encino Ranch – sold in 1954 and redeveloped, primarily as the Encino Village subdivision of mid-century modern tract homes – where downtown Bedford Falls was constructed for 1946’s “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
But building a studio complex is a risky proposition. When Cinespace embarked on the project, the industry was in the midst of a post-pandemic, peak-streaming production boom. Since then, there’s been a major contraction, exacerbated by dual WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023, followed by renegotiated IATSE and Teamster contracts in 2024 that spurred more projects to shoot outside the U.S.
That lent added urgency to the lobbying efforts mounted by Cinespace and other industry players in support of California’s Film and Television Tax Credit Program 4.0, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law in July 2025. It raised the annual cap on the incentive from $330 million to $750 million and bumped the base tax credit from 20%-25% on qualified expenditures to 35%-40%. It also made it fully refundable for the first time, enabling companies to get cash back from California if their credit exceeds their state tax burden. The initial results were positive: As of January 2026, 119 projects (39 television and 80 feature film) had been approved under the revised program, which are estimated to produce 25,000 crew hires and $4.1 billion in economic activity.
Bass also did her part, issuing an executive directive in May 2025 dubbed “Reel Change: Supporting Local Film and Television Production,” ordering city departments to take a proactive film-friendly approach to production and make iconic locations like Griffith Observatory and the Central Library more accessible and affordable for filming.
Despite these improvements, success is far from assured. According to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation’s 2026 Annual Economic Forecast released last month, sound stage occupancy hovered above 93% between 2016 and 2021, but by 2024 it had dipped to 63%. Meanwhile, sound stage square footage grew by 53% between 2020 and 2025.
But California Film Commission executive director Colleen Bell struck a positive note when she spoke to Variety on Monday.
“When a project is accepted into [California’s incentive] program, they have 180 days to start principal photography, so you’re not going to see an instant spike,” said Bell, who also addressed the crowd at the event. “There’s a gradual increase of production taking place, so stages will start to fill up slowly, but it’s happening.”
variety.com
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