Hollywood’s Ghost Towns: Why L.A. Soundstages Are Sitting Empty

I think you can tell a lot about the health of Hollywood relative to the health of the unions working. And when you have all the unions working all over Hollywood, especially teamsters and carpenters and the people who make the soundstages go, Hollywood is going great.

But when those soundstages lie empty, we're in trouble.

Well, a recent report from FilmLA via Variety confirms what many below-the-line workers have been feeling for months: Soundstage occupancy in Los Angeles has hit a slump.

As a filmmaker, it’s easy to see these headlines and panic. But behind the vacancy signs, there is a complex story of industry shifts, economic hangovers, and even maybe a glimmer of hope with new soundstages flourishing.

Let's dive in.

We Used To Be Busier

For decades, Los Angeles was in a "stage space crisis." If you weren't a Marvel movie or a Netflix flagship series, finding 20,000 square feet of available floor space was impossible. And those studios and projects took up those stages for years.

We even had developers building stages all over the city to keep up with peak TV and the gold era of streaming.

The new FilmLA report shows that the tide has turned. According to the data:

• Occupancy Rates are Down: Large-scale soundstages are seeing vacancy rates that haven't been seen since the immediate aftermath of the 2023 strikes.
• The "Post-Strike Slump": While everyone expected a massive "rubber band effect" of production returning, the reality has been a slow trickle rather than a flood.
• International Competition: More "runaway production" is heading to tax-incentive havens like the UK, Atlanta, and Eastern Europe, leaving L.A.’s premium stages without their usual tenants.

Why Is This Happening?

Look, like many other industry issues, it all comes down to consolidation, COVID hangover, and the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

While the strikes ended with fair deals for workers, studios used the downtime to reset their balance sheets. That meant canceling a ton of projects and really pulling back when it came to the greenlights.

Consolidation means fewer studios, and fewer studios means fewer movies and TV shows to even think about using those stages.

On top of all that....we now have Virtual Production.

Volume stages allow for shorter schedules. A show that might have occupied a stage for six months can now potentially wrap its stage work in three, leading to more frequent turnover and "dead air" between bookings.

An LED stage on the set of 'The Mandalorian' Credit: Disney+ | Melinda Sue Gordon

The Glimmer of Hope

Okay, so I read that report from FilmLA, and then I read The Ankler newsletter this morning, and it had a whole section about the new soundstages in Burbank across from Warner Bros called The Ranch.

They reported that those stages are now fully open and added 16 soundstages, bumping the WBD SoCal total to 50 stages.

It was also reported that WBD said its stages were at 91% capacity in 2025, which is well above the average for the 17 studios in the region that comprise the majority of stage capacity in the L.A. area.

I'm not saying that WB is going to be fine, but if Paramount is really going to shoot 30 movies a year and acquire the rights, they seem to have a plan in place to move that forward and have the room to make these movies.

We need the tax incentives to bring production back to LA and get people using these stages as well.

I see hope in both these cases.

The Bottom Line

The FilmLA report is a sobering reminder that the "Gold Rush" of the early 2020s streaming boom is over.

But also that a new Hollywood is emerging, and we're trying to figure out exactly what that looks like and how healthy it is under our current state.

Infrastructure doesn't stay empty forever. Whether these stages eventually fill back up with studio blockbusters or become the new home for indies at low prices remains to be seen.

Let me know what you think in the comments.