Democrats Won Big. Many Hollywood Crews Are Still Waiting for Work.

The 'Grey's Anatomy' spinoff moved to Albuquerque after California twice denied it a tax credit, Deadline reports.

Tom Curley has an Oscar for the sound on "Whiplash." What he hasn't had since "CSI: Vegas" was canceled in 2024 is steady work, he told IndieWire. He called the slide humiliating.

He's happy about the Nov. 3 midterms anyway. Democrats took back both chambers of Congress, Xavier Becerra won the race to succeed Gavin Newsom as governor, and Nithya Raman beat Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass after campaigning to make it easier to film here. But IndieWire reported Wednesday that many L.A. crew members who liked the results still don't know when their next paycheck will come. Each of the fixes now on the table moves work around, and not all of it moves toward L.A.

The clearest leak has already happened. ABC's West Texas-set "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff was supposed to shoot in Los Angeles. It's in pre-production in Albuquerque instead, after California turned down its tax-credit application twice, Deadline reported Nov. 6. It's the first time in 23 years that the franchise has left the state.

"We were denied credit due to the fact we were not providing enough jobs for the state to consider us an asset," Shondaland producer Betsy Beers told an Assembly committee hearing in North Hollywood on Oct. 29, according to Deadline. She said waiting to apply a second time cost the show stage space and crew, and that they were then told new series wouldn't get a chance to apply at all.

The fix with support from both parties is in Washington. The Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act was introduced Sept. 24. Its leads include Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Laura Friedman, both California Democrats, and Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican. The bill would give feature films, pilots and TV seasons that cost more than $1 million a 20 percent credit on American labor, as long as at least 75 percent of principal photography happens in the U.S., Friedman's office said.

Friedman told IndieWire on Monday that the House version had 54 cosponsors, split evenly between the parties, and that she's pushing to pass it before this Congress ends. If it's signed before 2027, she said, productions starting as early as Jan. 1 could qualify. If it doesn't pass this session, it has to be introduced again next year. Curley worries President Trump could pull his support as payback for the Republican losses. "All it takes is some hurt feelings to get in the way," he told IndieWire.

The bill is meant to bring work back from overseas. Curley's brief stint on the U.S. main unit of "Artificial" was partly in San Francisco, but he said most of that production shot in Italy. A federal credit could tip a job like that back to the States. Still, the 20 percent base is the same in every state, and some of the bonus credits reward shooting in rural opportunity zones. Where in America the work lands is left to the states to fight over.

In California, that fight happens in Sacramento. The state offers up to $750 million a year in film and TV credits, and Newsom has proposed raising that to at least $1 billion, IndieWire reported. Where the credit reaches, it shows up: credited projects accounted for 40.3 percent of scripted shooting on L.A.-area streets from July through September, almost twice their share a year earlier, FilmLA's quarterly report found. Total on-location shoot days still fell 4.8 percent, to 4,171.

Commercials, which the state credit doesn't cover, dropped 15.9 percent. The incoming governor and the incoming mayor also disagree about the cap. Becerra called the current program a floor during his campaign and promised to expand it, IndieWire reported, but Deadline reported that he has ruled out removing the cap, which Raman pledged to fight for.

At City Hall, the pitch is speed. Raman campaigned on cheaper fees for small shoots, clearer timelines for permits and a film office with its own staff, run out of the mayor's office, IndieWire reported. "We can't always be the cheapest, so we need to be the easiest," Pamala Buzick Kim, a co-founder of the advocacy group Stay in LA, told IndieWire. Small shoots already get one break: FilmLA and the city extended a low-impact permit pilot through April 30, 2027, at $350 instead of the standard $931.

Becerra's first budget will show how hard Sacramento plans to push. For the "Grey's" spinoff, it comes too late. The show is gearing up in Albuquerque, where, Beers told lawmakers, "they have been wonderful to work with, but we want to be here."

Source: IndieWire, retrieved November 12, 2026. Other sources: Deadline, friedman.house.gov, filmla.com.