U.S. film studios now spend just 42 percent of their production budgets inside the United States, down from 74 percent twenty-five years ago, according to a new report backed by a coalition of Hollywood unions including IATSE, the DGA, and SAG-AFTRA.
Television production has seen a similar collapse. Domestic spending on TV has fallen from 94 percent to 64 percent over the same period, the report found.
The decline comes even as overall dollar figures have grown. Major studios increased total production spending from $3 billion to $7 billion over the 25-year span, while TV spending jumped from $933 million to $8.4 billion. The study examined big-ticket productions: films budgeted at $5 million or more in 2025 dollars, and TV episodes costing at least $1 million for runtimes of 40 minutes or less, or $1.7 million for longer episodes.
The report credited part of the shift to the rise of streaming, which it said “fundamentally altered production scale, budgets, season lengths, and release models, creating discontinuities in what constitutes a comparable television series across periods.” It also found that the biggest budgets are concentrated in a small slice of titles, noting that “patterns observed within this group generally reflect the broader analysis trends, albeit with a somewhat larger decline.”
What the report does not do is explain why so much work has moved abroad in the first place.
Schiff: 42,000 Jobs Gone
That answer has come from California Sen. Adam Schiff (D), who spoke on the issue earlier this year at Burbank City Hall. Schiff said roughly 45 percent of all U.S. films and scripted television shows are now being shot overseas, up from 33 percent in 2022 — a 12-point jump in just a few years.
Schiff said more than 42,000 jobs have disappeared along with it, along with the livelihoods and careers that depended on them. He blamed “foreign governments that have invested aggressively in building their own film industries” for luring projects away from American soil.
“State programs cannot simply substitute for the kind of global, federal and competitive tax incentives that are needed to bring production back to American soil and stop its offshoring,” Schiff said. “The urgency could not be greater.”
Schiff said he supports the incentive programs California lawmakers have put in place to keep production in state, but argued they aren’t enough without a federal tax credit to compete with what other countries are offering.
America Still Leads, But Market Share Is Shrinking
The Los Angeles Times has noted that the U.S. still captures the bulk of big-budget productions, even as its share of the market erodes. Last year the U.S. led all countries with $12.15 billion in production spending — but that figure was down 20 percent from 2024, according to ProdPro.
The United Kingdom has emerged as the chief beneficiary, drawing productions with expanded film incentives, experienced crews, and newly built facilities.
