Investors and developers are plowing ahead with soundstage construction plans as productions flee Los Angeles in droves.
East End Studios recently opened its $230 million Mission Campus in the Arts District, a 255,000-square-foot complex with five stages, although it hasn’t yet found a tenant, CoStar reported. It’s the latest studio space to hit the market amid softening demand as productions increasingly film outside Los Angeles.
Soundstage occupancy is in the low-60 percent range, according to FilmLA. That represents a major drop compared to the 90 percent occupancy brought on by the streaming boom at the beginning of the decade.
Greater Los Angeles had about 6.5 million square feet of soundstage inventory in 2024 — the most of any U.S. city — and another 3.5 million square feet of proposed soundstage space in the works, according to FilmLA.
Film production output in L.A. and across the country is expected to be higher this year than last year, according to a survey by ProdPro.
New studio spaces slated to open over the next year include Cinespace Los Angeles in Woodland Hills and the roughly $400 million Echelon Studios in Hollywood.
Bardas Investment Group and Bain Capital Real Estate’s Echelon Studios Hollywood project is being framed as a one-stop filming shop with 120,000 square feet of soundstages and production support space, 385,000 square feet of offices, 95,000 square feet of private bungalows and 10,000 square feet of restaurants and retail on its campus. The project is set to open next year.
Cinespace Studios’ Cinespace Los Angeles is set on 10 acres in Woodland Hills and is expected to open this fall with six 18,000-square-foot stages and 70,000 square feet of offices.
Meanwhile, older studios are undergoing upgrades to compete with new inventory.
Hackman Capital Partners is spending $1 billion to expand and upgrade its Television City studio property at 7800 Beverly Boulevard.
Hackman is focusing on the Television City project after handing back control of the largely vacant Radford Studio Center in Studio City last month to lender Goldman Sachs when occupancy dipped too low for the owner to generate enough revenue to meet its debt payments. Hackman is looking to sell its Saticoy Studios in Van Nuys.
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