LOS ANGELES — After 27 years, it is finally time to fill the empty lifeguard stands. In 2026, beleaguered California entertainment industry workers will see the return of what was once a major local employer: the TV show “Baywatch.”
A planned Fox reboot of the beach drama, which filmed in California in 1999 before it picked up its rescue buoys and moved to Hawaii, became one of 17 TV shows to receive an award from California’s recently expanded film and television tax credit program. Twenty-eight films, including a Snoop Dogg biopic, an Ang Lee Western and Michael Mann’s long-awaited “Heat” sequel, also received the credit, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced in November.
California has been losing business to production hubs in regions with generous tax incentives, including New Jersey, which has recently become an East Coast production hot spot. In October, Paramount signed a 10-year lease to build a studio there. Lionsgate, the studio behind the “Hunger Games” franchise, and Netflix also began construction on compounds there in the last year.
California officials hope the new tax credit, which more than doubled from $330 million to $750 million in 2025, will help them reverse what has been a brutal, yearslong slowdown in production in Hollywood’s home state.
“Workers are going to be getting back to consistent employment in California in 2026,” said Colleen Bell, executive director of the California Film Commission, the state agency that administers the film and TV tax credits. “Grips, electricians, costume designers. We had to sound the alarm. Something bold and urgent needed to be addressed.”
The Hollywood workforce endured an intense shock when the Covid-19 pandemic halted production in 2020. The 2023 actors and writers strikes, the 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires and an overall contraction in studio spending as the streaming bubble popped all worsened the problem.
Even with the tax credit boost, California entertainment workers will face new challenges in 2026, including the prospect of a merger between Warner Bros. Discovery and either Netflix or Paramount Skydance, a major industry consolidation that would be likely to result in more lost jobs.
And there is the uncertainty of Hollywood’s adoption of artificial intelligence tools, expected to be a point of contention when the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers begins its negotiations with the Screen Actors Guild in February.
“We’re very mindful of the workforce implications of AI,” Bell said. “But storytelling still depends on people, and our job is to make sure those jobs remain in California.”
“Survive ’til ’25” became the hopeful mantra in California, where many in the production world were depleting their safety nets. But 2025 didn’t turn out to be the boom year workers were anticipating. According to FilmLA, the nonprofit organization that administers film permits in Los Angeles, 2025 was actually the city’s second-worst year, after 2020, in terms of the number of local shoot days for films, TV shows, commercials and other productions.
“People were starting to wonder if California is still the place to make our home,” said Philip Sokoloski, vice president of integrated communications at FilmLA. “Their anguish finally reached the ears of our leaders.”
California lost about 40,000 jobs in motion picture and video production in 2024 compared with 2022, a drop of 28%, according to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Other businesses that depend on Hollywood activity and expense accounts, like restaurants, hotels and dry cleaners, also suffered.
After a push from Newsom and months of lobbying from entertainment unions, the grassroots “Stay in LA” movement, the Motion Picture Association and out-of-work crew members, California legislators passed the expanded tax credit last summer.
It is in 2026 that industry watchers expect the benefit of the expanded credit to start paying off.
Producers of the new “Baywatch” plan to hire 12 cast members and 181 crew members to shoot over 95 days in California this year, collecting a $21 million tax credit from the state against the show’s $52.6 million production budget. The makers of the Snoop biopic plan to hire 84 cast members and 190 crew people to shoot over 50 days, collecting a $17 million credit against a $48.3 million budget.
“Big love to the California Film Commission and Gov. Newsom for holdin’ it down with that tax credit,” Snoop said in a statement provided by Newsom’s office. “Y’all making it possible for us to tell my story right here where it all began. California raised me, inspired me, and now helpin’ bring this biopic to life in 2026. Much respect — that’s real teamwork, ya dig…”
Beyond interventions at the state level, there has also been a movement for a federal film tax incentive to help the U.S. compete with countries like Canada, the U.K., Australia and Ireland, which have all lured productions overseas.
Long considered politically unpopular with conservative voters, the notion of a federal film tax incentive got an unexpected boost in May when President Donald Trump floated a plan to implement a 100% tariff on movies made in other countries that are imported to the U.S.
The tariff hasn’t materialized, but at the time, Jon Voight and his manager, Steven Paul, two of Trump’s Hollywood advisers, recommended a federal tax incentive as part of a broader plan to bring moviemaking back to the U.S.
In the ensuing months, there have been “really productive talks across the aisle” about the idea, said Rep. Laura Friedman, D-Calif.
“I will give President Trump some kudos for calling out the importance of this industry,” said Friedman, who is a former film producer. “Once he started talking about that and desires to keep the industry in America, it did help encourage my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. We subsidize oil, pharma — it’s not like this is unheard of.”