By Dawn Chmielewski
SANTA CLARITA, California, June 16 (Reuters) – As guests milled around a cavernous sound-stage that houses one of the sets from the Amazon Prime Video series “Fallout,” writer and producer Jonathan Nolan hailed the role tax incentives played in bringing the production to California.
The first season of the series, which is a big-budget adaptation of a videogame set in a post-nuclear wasteland, was shot in New York. California was able to lure the production west in its second season, with $25 million in tax rebates.
“If the tax credit wasn’t here, it would be a non-starter and we wouldn’t be able to be here,” said Nolan, seated in a folding lawn chair placed on the set of a “Vault,” a subterranean fallout shelter decorated with the show’s retro-futuristic look.
Nolan played a prominent role in lobbying for California to approve $750 million in tax rebates to bring more film and television production to the state. He even went so far as to invite state legislators on set last year, to showcase how actors and craftspeople would benefit from the incentives.
“Fallout” remained in California for its third season, thanks to $42 million in tax credits on a budget of $166.3 million which allowed the production to hire nearly 600 crew members and 30 actors, according to the California Film Commission.
Nolan said he and others in the industry had become accustomed to boarding a plane to shoot in London, Budapest or Sydney, without worrying about the possible toll on Hollywood.
“People sort of laughed at the idea that Hollywood would ever stop being Hollywood — but I think the last five years, it really has,” Nolan said.
Entertainment industry employment has been declining since its peak in late-2022, presenting fewer opportunities for actors, writers, and the scores of craftspeople — from carpenters to costumers to camera operators to caterers — who support film and television production.
California has been especially hard hit, shedding 17,234 jobs from 2019 through 2023, according to the Milken Institute. A combination of factors, including declining television advertising revenue and stagnating streaming growth, caused studios to seek less expensive places to make movies and series, it found.
The occupancy rate in Hollywood’s sound stages has fallen to 62% in the first half of 2025 from nearly full occupancy in 2016, according to Film LA, the non-profit organization that coordinates filming in greater Los Angeles.
“That threatens to hollow out and destroy a 100-year cultural institution that is maybe one of the most important parts of American culture and our ability to broadcast our culture around the world,” Nolan said. “So, I think the rebate was essential in bringing us back.”
Actor Walton Goggins, who plays a dual role as Cooper Howard, a pre-war Hollywood actor known for starring in Western films, and a bounty hunter known as The Ghoul, told Reuters he feels grateful for the opportunity to work in Los Angeles.
“This job permeates every aspect of this city and so to be back here filming this show that employs this many people — artisans that are the best in the world at what they do, given the opportunity to operate at their highest level — I’m in awe,” Goggins said, adding, “I only hope that this tax credit expands so that more production can come back here.”
(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski in Los Angeles; Editing by Sonali Paul)
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