‘Not the charmed industry it once was’: can Hollywood find its comeback story?

Fri, 26 Dec 2025

After the writers’ and actors’ strikes, the pandemic, and structural shifts in technology, LA’s trying to find its footing in a changed industry

The veteran Hollywood cinematographer Bruce McCleery knows all about Los Angeles’s struggles to maintain its dominance in the entertainment industry, because for most of the past 16 years he has lived on the road, never short of work but unable to land a major job within striking distance of his home and family in southern California.

It’s an increasingly common experience for many successful professionals in Hollywood who are hired by studios and production houses still largely based in Los Angeles, but do the actual work in Atlanta, or Toronto, or London, or Budapest.