Hollywood’s collapse continues as another…
Another longtime Hollywood manufacturing company has shut its doorways, changing into the latest casualty of California’s extended slowdown in movie and tv manufacturing.
Shadowcast Pictures, a Los Angeles-based manufacturing tools rental company that provided cameras, lighting and other filmmaking gear to motion pictures, tv reveals and commercials for almost twenty years, has ceased operations after struggling through years of industry turmoil.
“I couldn’t imagine the film industry that was profitable and had a foolproof system for over 100 years fall off a cliff,” proprietor Jay Ellison told CBS Los Angeles.
Shadowcast is the latest casualty for Hollywood companies. trekandphoto – stock.adobe.com
Shadowcast labored on numerous industrial and TV productions. Instagram/@shadowcastpictures
“I couldn’t imagine the film industry that was profitable and had a foolproof system for over 100 years fall off a cliff,” proprietor Jay Ellison said. Getty Images
Ellison said the business never totally recovered from the disruptions precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic and was additional battered by the 2023 Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strikes, the continuing decline in manufacturing across Los Angeles and the growing use of artificial intelligence in filmmaking.
“AI is basically replacing the background, the lighting, even the costume, wardrobe, in certain instances,” Ellison said. “It’s all being changed and manipulated by AI.”
Shadowcast Pictures, which was independently owned and operated by Ellison, is the latest manufacturing assist business to disappear as work continues to migrate out of California. The company specialised in renting manufacturing tools to movie, TV and industrial shoots slightly than producing motion pictures itself.
Its closure provides to a growing listing of leisure companies that have folded in latest years.
More than 80 movie and tv manufacturing service firms in Los Angeles have closed since 2022, CBS Los Angeles reported. Among them was Faux Prop House, a longtime prop rental company that shut down in 2025 after citing the steep decline in local manufacturing.
Entertainment attorney Jonathan Handel warned that the industry’s struggles lengthen properly past Hollywood studios, affecting hundreds of companies that rely on movie and tv work throughout Southern California.
Jay Ellison blamed AI for eliminating the need for a lot of his company’s sources. Instagram/@jayefilm
Ellison’s Shadowcast announced the cessation of its operations. Instagram/@shadowcastpictures
“This is a problem not just for the entertainment industry,” Handel told CBS Los Angeles. “This is a problem for the economy of Los Angeles as a whole. It’s one that needs to be addressed very aggressively by the next mayoral administration and by the next governor.”
California lawmakers have expanded the state’s Film and Television Tax Credit Program in an effort to lure productions back from competing states and abroad, but many industry leaders say the incentives have yet to reverse the exodus.
States including Georgia, New Mexico and New York, along with nations such as Canada and the United Kingdom, continue to entice major productions with aggressive tax incentives and established manufacturing infrastructure.
“It’s very difficult,” Handel said. “Once business has left and is left for a duration, those other locations build up a reservoir of physical and human capital, of trained crew members. It becomes harder to take the business back than it would have been to prevent it from leaving.”
Federal lawmakers are also weighing proposals for a nationwide manufacturing tax incentive that might be mixed with present state credit in an effort to encourage more movie and tv initiatives to stay in the United States.
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