The entertainment industry just got hit with numbers nobody expected.
Executives tried to blame everything except the real problem.
And Hollywood learned a painful lesson after going woke after this devastating news.
LA production crashes worse than union strike
Film and TV production in Los Angeles collapsed to levels not seen since FilmLA started tracking the data.¹
Production in the greater LA area plummeted 13.2% from July through September 2025 compared to the same period last year.²
That’s worse than the devastation caused by the 2023 SAG union strike that shut down Hollywood for months.³
The numbers tell a story Hollywood executives don’t want you to know about.
Employment in LA’s motion picture industry crashed from 142,000 workers in 2022 to just 100,000 by the end of 2024.⁴
Forty-two thousand jobs vanished in two years – a staggering 30% workforce reduction.⁵
Below-the-line crew members – the camera operators, grips, sound technicians, and other skilled workers who actually make movies happen – bore the brunt of this catastrophe.
A stunning 63% of below-the-line workers earned less money in 2024 than the previous year.⁶
Even more alarming, 41% are seriously considering leaving the industry entirely.⁷
These aren’t just statistics on a spreadsheet – they represent families wondering how to pay mortgages and put food on the table.
High California taxes and rampant crime drove some productions out of LA, but that doesn’t explain the complete picture.⁸
Total U.S. film and TV production keeps declining no matter where you look in the country.
Theatrical releases dropped 28% since 2019, while scripted TV projects fell 25%.⁹
The pattern Hollywood refuses to acknowledge
The entertainment industry has spent years blaming external factors for its failures.
First it was the pandemic shutdowns that supposedly devastated box office returns.
Then executives pointed fingers at streaming services for changing how audiences consume content.
But those excuses don’t hold up when you examine the actual timeline.
By 2023, American markets had fully reopened along with most foreign markets.¹⁰
The COVID scapegoat no longer existed as a convenient explanation.
More importantly, adjusted for inflation, theatrical attendance numbers were already declining after 2015 – years before anyone heard of COVID-19.¹¹
From 2015 to 2019, audience numbers dropped roughly 10%.¹²
Today, theatrical attendance sits at least 30% below 2015 levels.¹³
Another factor analysts consistently ignore is Democrat mismanagement in cities and states where entertainment production happens.
Higher costs, rising crime rates, and an underlying malaise created by radical leftist policies suffocate businesses.
This devastation started years before COVID emerged.
California’s high tax burden makes production prohibitively expensive compared to states offering aggressive tax incentives.
Texas recently doubled its funding for film and TV production, making it far more attractive than California for cost-conscious producers.¹⁴
The vast majority of film and TV content gets shot in greater Los Angeles because of proximity to studios, editing facilities, effects houses, and deep pools of experienced talent.
A production decline in Hollywood signals an industry-wide collapse, not just regional struggles.
The drop in LA activity directly coincides with plummeting box office receipts since 2019.¹⁵
Conservative films expose the real problem
Production companies keep citing inflation and higher ticket costs as the primary obstacles to theatrical success.
That explanation sounds more reasonable than blaming the pandemic for problems that persisted years after lockdowns ended.
That explanation sounds reasonable until you look at which movies are actually making money.
Films without woke messaging keep crushing movies that push radical leftist ideology at the box office.¹⁶
It’s not happening once or twice – it’s a pattern you can set your watch by.
September 2024 saw three conservative-themed films land in the Top 10 simultaneously.¹⁷
"Am I Racist?" – a Daily Wire documentary featuring Matt Walsh going undercover to expose DEI radicals – came in fourth place with $4.75 million in its opening weekend.¹⁸
"Reagan," the Dennis Quaid feature about President Ronald Reagan’s consequential life, claimed fifth place.¹⁹
The faith-based film "The Forge" from Sony and the Kendrick Brothers also landed in the Top 10.²⁰
"Am I Racist?" pulled in more than $12 million to become 2024’s highest-grossing documentary.²¹
Traditional media outlets pretended the film didn’t exist.
Daily Wire didn’t need them – they spent millions reaching conservative audiences directly through their own online channels instead of begging mainstream outlets for coverage.²²
Compare that success to Disney’s 2023 slate – seven major releases including "Wish," "Elemental," "The Little Mermaid," "Haunted Mansion," "Indiana Jones 5," "The Marvels," and "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania."²³
All seven underperformed at the box office, with several losing hundreds of millions of dollars.²⁴
The contrast couldn’t be starker – low-budget conservative films turning profits while major studio tentpole releases with massive marketing budgets hemorrhaged money.
Hollywood traded audiences for ideology
Nobody inside the entertainment bubble wants to admit what’s happening to box office receipts.
Studios began forcing diversity quotas on every production – box-checking trumped talent every single time.²⁵
The BAFTAs and Oscars threw out their old rulebooks and wrote new ones where "diversity" and "inclusion" mattered more than making good films.²⁶
Writers rooms filled up with activists who wanted to lecture audiences about woke politics instead of entertaining them.
2025’s original movies crashed and burned while audiences played it safe with franchises they already knew.²⁷
Major releases like "Drop," "Mickey 17," "The Alto Knights," "Novocaine," "Fly Me to the Moon," and "Megalopolis" face-planted despite studios throwing millions at marketing them.²⁸
People stopped gambling on unknown movies when they could at least predict what a franchise sequel would deliver.
But playing it safe with franchises didn’t work either once studios started cramming woke messaging into beloved properties.
The 2016 "Ghostbusters" reboot with an all-female cast lost Sony over $70 million after fans rejected the obvious gender-swap gimmick.²⁹
"Terminator: Dark Fate" in 2019 sidelined legacy characters to emphasize woke themes, resulting in estimated losses around $122.6 million.³⁰
Disney’s live-action "Snow White" remake starring Rachel Zegler became notorious for woke controversy before even hitting theaters, with Zegler alienating the original audience by calling Prince Charming "weird and a stalker."³¹
From 1995 to 2009, Hollywood’s six major studios released an average of 112 theatrical films per year.³²
That number dropped to 83 films annually from 2010 to 2023, with Disney’s absorption of Fox exacerbating the decline.³³
In 2023, major studios only released 88 films.³⁴
Fewer films coupled with terrible writing and woke mandates created a perfect storm of failure.
Wall Street analyst Doug Creutz warned Hollywood risks entering a "negative feedback loop" where fewer releases and theater closures combine to squeeze revenue even further.³⁵
The number of theater screens in America declined from 41,000 before COVID to about 35,000 today.³⁶
Creutz believes theatrical demand permanently declined 20% from changed consumer behavior during the pandemic, on top of secular attendance declines that started before 2015.³⁷
China’s box office – once a coveted revenue stream for American studios – collapsed for Hollywood films as Chinese audiences increasingly preferred domestic productions over woke American content.³⁸
"Ne Zha 2" became the only movie in history to generate $1 billion at the box office in a single market and is now the only non-Hollywood film to cross $2 billion globally.³⁹
The solution Hollywood refuses to implement
The path forward seems obvious to everyone except the executives making decisions.
Stop making woke garbage that alienates half the country.
Hire talented writers who understand storytelling instead of activists who want to lecture audiences about radical leftist ideology.
Cast the best actors for roles instead of checking demographic boxes to satisfy DEI consultants.
Make movies audiences actually want to watch instead of films designed to win awards from other woke industry insiders.
The conservative film movement proved this model works.
Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing explained their success came from marketing directly to an underserved audience rather than relying on mainstream outlets.⁴⁰
"We’re the best in the world at talking to our exact audience online," Boreing said.⁴¹
"Conservatives have rightly observed that there’s very little of this kind of content for them."⁴²
Daily Wire spent millions marketing to their audience and used promotional channels worth millions more to reach viewers Hollywood walked away from.⁴³
Angel Studios put out faith-based films "Cabrini" and "The Chosen" that turned profits on limited theatrical runs.⁴⁴
These movies worked because they treated audiences like intelligent adults instead of children who needed lectures.
Characters mattered more than checking boxes. Stories came first, messaging never.
Studio executives keep talking about a 2025 rebound while refusing to fix what’s actually broken.
Studio executives keep hoping things will magically return to normal without changing what they make or how they make it.
But audiences are voting with their wallets for content that respects their values and intelligence.
Hollywood keeps doubling down on woke ideology while jobs disappear and the industry circles the drain.
Forty-two thousand workers lost their jobs because executives cared more about woke virtue signaling than putting butts in seats.
How many more families need to watch their livelihoods vanish before someone in Tinseltown figures out Get Woke, Go Broke isn’t a joke?
¹ Tyler Durden, "Get Woke, Go Broke: Hollywood Productions Plummet To All Time Lows," ZeroHedge, October 17, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ Ibid.
¹² Ibid.
¹³ Ibid.
¹⁴ Screen Hollywood, "Is Hollywood on The Decline?," June 16, 2025.
¹⁵ Tyler Durden, "Get Woke, Go Broke: Hollywood Productions Plummet To All Time Lows," ZeroHedge, October 17, 2025.
¹⁶ Ibid.
¹⁷ Christian Toto, "Game Changer? Conservative Movies Crash Box Office Charts," Hollywood in Toto, September 16, 2024.
¹⁸ Ibid.
¹⁹ Ibid.
²⁰ Ibid.
²¹ Rebecca Keegan, "Inside the rise of the conservative movie industry behind ‘Reagan,’ ‘Am I Racist?’," Los Angeles Times via Yahoo, January 19, 2025.
²² Ibid.
²³ The Federalist, "Can Non-Woke Blockbusters Pull Hollywood Out Of Its Slump?," April 4, 2024.
²⁴ Ibid.
²⁵ Sasha Stone, "The Great Box Office Panic of 2024," Awards Daily, May 28, 2024.
²⁶ Ibid.
²⁷ Insight Trends World, "Entertainment: Why Are Original Movies Struggling At the 2025 Box Office?," April 16, 2025.
²⁸ Ibid.
²⁹ WatchMojo, "10 Movies That Went Woke and FAILED," May 18, 2025.
³⁰ Ibid.
³¹ The Quartering, "Disney GUTTED By MASSIVE LAYOFFS & Woke TV & Movies FLOP!," June 3, 2025.
³² FilmTake, "From Blockbusters to Bust: Why the Film Industry is Fading Fast," June 4, 2024.
³³ Ibid.
³⁴ Publination, "Woke Hollywood Gets Another Woeful Box Office Return."
³⁵ Deadline, "Hollywood’s Theatrical Business At Risk Of Entering ‘Negative Feedback Loop’, Analyst Warns," March 26, 2025.
³⁶ Ibid.
³⁷ Ibid.
³⁸ CNBC, "Hollywood’s Chinese box office was already in decline even before Trump’s tariffs," April 11, 2025.
³⁹ Ibid.
⁴⁰ Rebecca Keegan, "Inside the rise of the conservative movie industry behind ‘Reagan,’ ‘Am I Racist?’," Los Angeles Times via Yahoo, January 19, 2025.
⁴¹ Ibid.
⁴² Ibid.
⁴³ Ibid.
⁴⁴ The Federalist, "Can Non-Woke Blockbusters Pull Hollywood Out Of Its Slump?," April 4, 2024.
