We all know how production is shrinking and shriveling in high-cost-of-living-and-shooting California. We all THINK we know how bad it is getting in so many ways for formerly well-paid and regularly employed crews to make a living in the “Golden State.”
Wanna bet you DON’T know how bad it is? Get a load of this.
There is a gameshow called “The Floor” which is hosted by Rob Lowe. It pits 100 all-American contestants against each other eliminating them one by one until the final season winner takes home a $250k prize. They’ve made four seasons so far. It is popular and, based on that longevity, successful.
And they make it in Dublin, Ireland.
A screenshot from The Floor – YouTube, Reality Club
You read that right: They find it more economical thanks to lower production costs and subsidies to fly, house, and bring ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE from Southern California to IRELAND rather than shoot it on the lots and stages of Tinseltown!
Talk about a pot of gold at the end of a very LONG leprichaun’s rainbow! Talk about not-so-lucky-for-the-Hollywood-economy charms that are only magically delicious when flown several thousand miles away!
Shocked? Well so was I for a minute and a half when I read the whole story and really I shouldn’t have been.
After all, even without the tantalizing production subsidies that have been drawing series and feature films to states like Georgia and nearer nations like Canada, the Cali “rent” as the saying used to scream, “is too damn high.”
Is it any wonder that studios like Universal Hollywood are tearing down backlot sets AND sound stages to add to the tour attractions? Just how much of the value of the currently-being-fought-over Warner Bros. studio in Burbank is in NOT the IP’s and library of past productions but in the mere real estate…and how long will that hold as things get worse?
More importantly to my brothers and sisters of what used to be called an “industry” but is fast becoming more of an exported business than the bricks-and-mortar factories that escaped to China over the past 20-30 years, how can they work, pay mortgages, raise families, and pay all of the ancillary workers and businesses that any “company town” generates like dry cleaners and restaurants and handymen and plumbers and everyone else who has traditionally worked FOR film industry folks even if not “in” the “industry” itself?
Contestants on The Floor – YoUTube, Reality Club
READ: Jason Momoa to Star in Helldivers Movie
Remember, this is without any AI displacements. This is without any trends in streaming or audience shifting tastes. This is flying 100 folks and their spouses and suitcases and such to IRELAND from L.A. just to make a game show! (And, yes, I just looked it up—the airplane ticket alone in “coach” runs about $650 round trip. Multiply by 100 (not to mention the first class for execs and hosts and staff)
But it’s still cheaper than doing it in town.
I, and no doubt a lot of you, am old enough to remember when a foreign vacation was a PRIZE on such shows, not the basic minimum deal for participation.
The set of The Floor – YoUTube, Reality Club
Ah well…at least the whisky is good.
Hollywood’s future (and especially as we enter contract negotiation season AND the midterm political season hot on its heels) notsomuch, begorrah.
