Film Industry

California did not just produce the film industry. It built it — the red carpets and the marquee stars, and the grip who taught his son the trade, the costumer who put her daughter through college, the editor who spent thirty years perfecting a skill that no other place on earth could match. The glamour and the craft are not in competition. They are the same story. And that story belongs to California.

I have spent my career fighting to keep it that way. In 1999, I stood before the House Ways and Means Committee and warned my colleagues that we were losing this industry to foreign governments writing checks that American workers couldn’t compete against. I built a bipartisan coalition, Democrats and Republicans, from California to Florida to Illinois, because a good job does not have a party affiliation. In 2008, the Runaway Productions Prevention Act became law. And then I watched the work continue to leave anyway, because a single provision, however hard-won, is not a strategy.

The industry has since been reshaped by forces no single legislature could outpace. Streaming broke the financial architecture that sustained a generation of middle-class entertainment workers. Residuals built for broadcast now generate fractions of what equivalent success once paid. The mid-budget film has largely disappeared, leaving a hollow middle between low-budget prestige and billion-dollar franchises. And artificial intelligence has arrived not as a distant threat but as an active force already altering what work gets done, by whom, and at what cost. Through all of it, ownership has narrowed, fewer hands controlling more of what gets made, what gets seen, and who gets paid, and the people who actually make the work have been the last to benefit and the first to absorb the loss.

The numbers tell the rest. California’s share of national film and television employment has fallen from 35% to 27% in just a few years. Seventeen thousand entertainment jobs have disappeared since 2022. These are real people, the best in the world at what they do, whose livelihoods are being inaudibly dismantled as productions chase incentives beyond our borders. California has stepped up, but that work is not finished and the states and countries competing against us are not standing still.

I will defend what has been built. I will expand what is working. I will invest in our workers, because California has a responsibility to prepare our workforce for the fight ahead. And I will take this fight back to Washington, because American productions should not have to compete against foreign government treasuries with no support from their own. Across this industry, as across much of the American economy, the rewards have migrated upward while the risk has stayed with the worker. A shrinking number of players capture more of the market, more of the profit, and more of the data that now determines whose work gets made and how it gets valued. That is not the natural order. It is the result of choices, regulatory, legislative, and corporate, that California has both the standing and the obligation to scrutinize and, where necessary, to challenge.

These workers built this industry. They deserve a state and federal government that fights for them with the same ferocity they bring to their craft.

This is not a new fight for me. What is at stake is the economic future of hundreds of thousands of California families whose lives are written in the credits that roll at the end of every film and show made in this state. Those credits must say: made here. Made by us. Made in Hollywood.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

California Is the Home of Film and TV and We Intend to Keep It That Way. The industry grew here because California offered what no other place could match. This platform is oriented around making sure the work, the craft, and the jobs that define this industry remain rooted in this state.

This Industry Succeeds When Its Workers Succeed. From the stars on the red carpet to the crew who make the magic happen, these policies are measured against one standard: is it good for the people who do the work. That means protecting their livelihoods, ensuring they can negotiate fairly, and guaranteeing they share in the success their work creates.

Prepare California’s Workforce for What’s Coming, Not Just What Was. AI and new technologies are already reshaping every craft in this industry. California’s workers deserve the tools, the training, and the governing authority to help set the terms of that transition, not just absorb it.

Competing Means Committing, Here and in Washington. Other states and countries made sustained commitments and stuck with them. California can too. And our workers should not fight alone against foreign government treasuries. California will lead the push for federal support, because the government must show up for its workers at every level.

POLICY AGENDA

Convene the Industry’s Future: A California Entertainment Summit

California will not manage this industry’s transition from the sidelines. How content is financed, made, distributed, and how workers get paid, all of it is restructuring at once. The compensation models that sustained a generation of middle-class entertainment workers were built for an industry that no longer exists. The market alone cannot plan its way through disruption this broad and this fast. I will convene a California Entertainment Summit: guilds, crew organizations, producers, studios, streamers, and technology companies, with a binding mandate: produce a public action plan, not a report. Each workstream will have a named lead and defined milestone with a goal of making California the most modern, worker-centered production ecosystem in the world, before someone else does it without us.

A Tax Credit Program Built to Compete

California’s tax credit program must be defended first – what exists today is the floor. From that foundation I will expand it, guided by ongoing assessment of where we are losing work: post-production and VFX, independent productions, episodic television at scale, and whatever gaps the data reveals. That means also updating eligible costs to reflect how productions are actually greenlighted and crewed today, not how they were structured a decade ago. Where demand is real, where jobs follow, and where the return to California justifies it, I intend to increase the program’s scale, capacity and access. Because a state serious about keeping this industry does not let qualified productions walk out the door, and every check it writes must come back to California workers.

Make Performance Data Work for the People Who Earned It

The entertainment industry has always run on the currency of success, and the ability to measure it, share in it, and build on it. The shift to streaming changed that equation in ways the industry’s compensation structures have not yet caught up with. What counts as success, what data is shared, and what triggers additional compensation are questions without consistent or verifiable answers for the writers, directors, cast, and crew whose work drives platform value. Workers cannot bargain fairly for what they cannot see, and they cannot plan careers around success they cannot verify. Voluntary transparency is not enough. I will support a California Content Performance Disclosure requirement: platforms must share meaningful performance data with the cast, writers, directors, and crew whose work drives their value, in a standardized form that gives workers what they need to bargain fairly. 

Set the Terms on AI Before Someone Else Does

Artificial intelligence is already altering what work gets done, by whom, and at what cost. I will support state requirements that productions disclose how AI is being used, that gives performers enforceable rights over their own likenesses, and that ensures the people whose work trained these systems are compensated for it.

Build out Entertainment Workforce Development and Transition Programs

The people who built this industry deserve to shape what it becomes. My administration will strengthen and expand California’s existing workforce development infrastructure, provide stronger governing authority for workers and their guilds, deepen these programs’ ties to the tax credit program, and ensure that, as new technologies transform crafts, it is California’s workers who are helping set the terms of the transition.

Fast Track State & Local Permitting 

No state in the country has California’s landscapes, but for many, the local and state permitting takes far too long. I will work to clear the bureaucratic friction that turns a permit request into a multi-agency ordeal, giving California’s irreplaceable locations back to the productions that want to shoot in them, and push for a more formalized state-local incentive structure to further encourage local governments to compete for the privilege of being places where films can easily get made.

Take the Fight to Washington: A Federal Production Subsidy to Counter Trump’s Broken Promises

California productions compete against the full weight of foreign governments like Canada, the UK, and France, and Washington has left us to fight alone. A federal solution is not a silver bullet – the work of keeping California competitive happens here, at home, through the policies in this platform. But, a Governor who knows this fight, who built the bipartisan coalitions on the House Ways and Means Committee, and who has the relationships to move legislation in Washington is better positioned than most to push for what California’s workers deserve: a federal government that is in this fight with them, not absent from it. My administration will partner with our congressional delegation and push for a bipartisan solution, conditioned on a domestic wage guarantee so any credit creates American jobs, not foreign ones.