How London Became the New Hollywood

Yahoo

09-05-2025

Rumor has it that when London's luxury hotel Chiltern Firehouse erupted in flames in February, most of its high-profile clientele spilling out onto the streets weren't well-heeled Brits — they were from Los Angeles.
The venue was set to host Netflix's BAFTA awards party that weekend — with attendees including Zoe Saldaña, Leonardo DiCaprio, Demi Moore, Adrien Brody and Colman Domingo — but a rogue strip of wood falling from a pizza oven led to a change of plans. More than 100 firefighters descended on the celebrity hotspot in Marylebone, owned by Chateau Marmont proprietor André Balazs. The hotel incurred major damage, but no injuries were reported. But it's a suitable metaphor: London is ablaze.
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From the many state-of-the-art shooting facilities running at full capacity (millions of square feet of soundstage space combined) to a tax incentive scheme that saves producers millions and a progressive environment that is literally a world away from the daily onslaught of President Trump's draconian policy decrees (not to mention the chaos unleashed on travel), London is, as one insider puts it, 'more Hollywood than Hollywood.'
In 2024, media agency Film London estimated that about £9.5 billion ($12.7 billion) is set to be invested in the city for production during the next five years. The global hubs of Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and Disney continue to expand their U.K. offices as studios like Pinewood (home to 12 MCU blockbusters) and Ealing are fully booked out. Some of the biggest players in the production world right now — think Working Title, Protagonist Pictures and All3Media — are headquartered in London. British and Irish talent dominate in front of and behind the camera. And to those working in the U.K. capital's entertainment industry, this tidbit of insider tattle may not come as a surprise. It's not just cost savings and the Trump effect; Tinseltown has lost much of its luster.
Once the global hub of film, wealth and glamour, L.A., more than any other city, has become a casualty of the worldwide production plunge. Hollywood film and TV production have taken a momentous hit, with U.S. productions across the board down some 40 percent from pre-strike levels in 2022. But in the U.K., production revenue in 2024 topped £5.6 billion ($7.4 billion), a 31 percent increase from the previous year, according to the British Film Institute's research and statistics unit.
Shooting levels in California, reeling from budget reductions across most studios and streamers, last year fell to their lowest level observed by FilmLA since it started tracking the data in 2017 (excluding 2020 at the height of the pandemic).
Though they only tore through 1.3 percent of the city's filming locations, the L.A. wildfires put even more projects on pause. 'It just doesn't make sense when you do the math,' a top streaming executive says, adding that entire soundstages on L.A. lots are sitting idle.
And while California Gov. Gavin Newsom tries to push through the expansion of the state's Film and Television Tax Credit program to $750 million annually, he now has his hands full with Trump's spate of upending tariffs, the latest of which has baffled an entire industry. His 100 percent tariff proposal on all movies coming into the U.S. that are 'produced in foreign lands' has, naturally, prompted more questions than answers. What about co-productions? Does this apply to U.S. productions already underway outside of the States? Marvel, for example, has kicked off their hotly anticipated Avengers: Doomsday in London.
Luckily, a U.K.-U.S. trade deal was struck early Thursday morning — the first major trade deal of Trump's second term — with both British prime minister Keir Starmer and the President lauding the countries' allyship.
Starmer, dialling into the Oval Office news conference via phone, called it a 'fantastic, historic day,' while Trump described it as a much-needed 'win'. The vague rhetoric coming from both leaders was indicative of the breadth of detail outlined; though major talking points include a removal of the 25 percent tariff on U.K. steel and aluminium, as well as car export cuts and chopping the tariff on ethanol for U.S. goods, Trump's plan to slap a 100 percent tariff on British-made movies was not addressed in the hours after the deal was formally announced. In other words: we wait.
There is one thing Trump's right about: Hollywood is facing a 'very fast death.'
This is where the U.K. comes in. Sources tell THR that Hollywood producers are gravitating to London to shoot, write and even permanently live. It helps that the population of an overwhelmingly left-leaning industry is mortified by Trump's re-election (one lawyer says her Oscar-winning client who has relocated to Britain was almost entirely motivated by Trump's return to The White House), but the biggest incentive is interminably alluring: money.
The tax breaks from the U.K. are among the best in the world. Until 2034, film and TV producers seeking to shoot in the U.K. can receive a 40 percent reduction on their final bill as of this year. The Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit provides them with a tax credit worth 34 percent of their U.K. production costs, and as of April 1, filmmakers can claim a credit of 39 percent on their visual effects costs. Indie films with budgets of less than £15 million ($20 million) can claim a whopping 53 percent back thanks to the new Independent Film Tax Credit, in place since October.
In laymen's terms, it's cheaper: The tax relief is greater, and this means that studios can recoup the money they lose elsewhere (Disney, for example, is reported to have received more than a third of a billion dollars in U.K. tax credits the past decade). After taxes, Hollywood producers in Britain can claw back a net 20 percent of the cost of the production. And crucially, U.S. nationals are not required to pay double tax: They offset the American tax using what they already paid to the U.K.
Sure, it's cheaper to film in Australia, too, and Spain, especially — Netflix has just made Madrid's Secuoya Studios its European hub for production — but there is another benefit to shooting in London that goes beyond money: infrastructure.
'I've been blown away,' says Shadowbox Studios COO Mike Mosallam of the facilities at his company's state-of-the-art Shinfield Studios. Perched just outside London, Shinfield was established in 2021 and became fully operational in June.
The facility, which boasts nearly 1 million square feet of studio space, including 18 purpose-built soundstages, is emblematic of the shooting boom in the U.K. Now at capacity, the studio has played host to a number of high-profile Hollywood titles, including Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Disney's Star Wars spinoff Andor and Ben Gregor's hotly anticipated The Magic Faraway Tree. These shoots account for a fraction of the titles produced in and around London in recent years.
Of course, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland or indeed other parts of England are valuable, too, but of the approximately 7 million square feet of filming stage space that the U.K. benefits from, nearly a quarter of it (21 percent, to be precise) is in London.
Lucasfilm, the George Lucas-founded production company behind one of the most lucrative franchises in moviemaking history, has shot all nine of its Star Wars features at the company's Pinewood base. Solo, Rogue One and the Indiana Jones flicks also have laid the groundwork for a legacy built on billions of dollars' worth of success in the U.K., which is invested back into the business. And it aids local coffers as well: Left Bank Pictures' BBC drama This City Is Ours is estimated to have boosted Liverpool's economy by £9 million ($12 million), according to the city council.
A Lucasfilm source tells THR that this legacy element also promotes continuity of crews: Costume designers on recent Star Wars projects are the children of prop department pros on 1977's A New Hope: 'Harrison [Ford], Mark [Hamill] and Carrie [Fisher] were American and George was American, but all the crew were Brits.' The same applies with James Bond — which will still be made in England following its Amazon takeover — and Harry Potter too: Hollywood produced but was flanked by U.K. teams.
'It's not just, 'Let's go someplace [exotic] and get a tax break,' ' a source adds. 'Because when you show up, there's really no workforce. You have to import all of that, and that's expensive. But you go to London and you have stages, personnel and everything you need.'
'We've had really big, iconic films filmed here, and what the U.K. has done is they've built on that infrastructure' by investing in new and old facilities, adds London-based immigration lawyer Chetal Patel, who has helped some of the industry's biggest stars move across the Atlantic. Amazon's acquisition of the historic Bray Studios (home of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Mummy and Alien, to name three) is set to get millions of dollars in investment over the next five years.
There's also the benefit of geography. Location-scouting from London is a streamlined task when Wales is a short car journey away and the Scottish Highlands just a 60-minute flight. The rest of Europe — including the tax-light regions of Eastern Europe, Spain and Greece — are only hours from the urban landscape of London by plane.
'No matter where in the world [producers] might be looking, in my experience, production decisions consistently come down to two things — people and prices,' says Mosallam. 'As a world-class city, London is an easy ask for top-tier talent.'
Indeed, there's no need to fly far from family when talent (and crew) can grab an early morning taxi to Pinewood. 'The U.K. is an easier sell to stars,' says L.A.-based talent attorney Abel Lezcano. 'Above-the-line talent, meaning actors, head writers, directors … They don't necessarily want to go to South Africa or Botswana for eight weeks. Flying from New York to London is not much different than flying New York to Los Angeles.'
When Wicked's Ariana Grande released the deluxe version of her most recent album, Eternal Sunshine, one of the most talked-about tracks was a love letter to the north London area Hampstead. 'I left my heart at a pub in Hampstead,' she sings. A favorite among celebrities like Taylor Swift and Harry Styles, the quaint, village-esque spot is a stone's throw from the city center and perfectly positioned for stars.
And Hampstead is one of a hundred — London's boroughs are extensive and diverse, with some of the world's best restaurants, green spaces, museums, sports arenas and theaters within reach. So when Jon M. Chu's Broadway adaptation filmed both parts of Wicked at Pinewood, its entire cast — Brits Cynthia Erivo and Jonathan Bailey included — were more than happy to nestle in the U.K. during the shoot. 'Maybe somebody gives you a great tax incentive to shoot in the desert,' another insider adds. 'But do you want to spend a year in the desert?'
Patel concurs. She says that her clients have been flocking to the U.K. thanks to benefits like the country's free health care system and security advantages (read: restrictive gun laws). One client working in Britain through the Global Talent visa tells THR: 'The political shift and cost of living, especially the cost of health care — which was virtually unaffordable as a freelancer — became a significant factor to the decision to extradite myself from the U.S. I felt that I was much more culturally tuned to the U.K. ethos.'
But there's another incentive as well: sticking it to Trump. With diversity and inclusion programs getting shuttered seemingly everywhere, Britain has the potential to become something of a refuge for talent hoping to get away from Trumpian turmoil. 'With the Trump administration, there is a crackdown on certain nationalities even coming into the U.S.,' explains Patel. 'If you're Indian or Pakistani, [it can be more difficult]. So a lot of people don't necessarily want to be in the U.S. … The U.K., to some extent, provides a safe haven for them.'
Then there's the chaos and uncertainty surrounding travel and visas thanks to Trump's hard-line immigration policy. Patel advises her clients to capitalize on a visa scheme called the Global Talent visa — 'the crème de la crème' of visa categories available in the U.K. — which allows talent to work and live in Britain for up to five years. Many of Patel's clients, she tells THR, have been making use of it in recent months. It isn't a sponsored route, but it allows the applicant to earn money however they like, whether as a freelancer or self-employed. All they need is a 'substantial track record' and an endorsement from a British-based member of the entertainment industry.
'My plan was to move here, and with the current administration, that time is now,' another creative on the Global Talent visa says. 'For the past few years, I've really enjoyed and related much more to the work coming out of the U.K. My favorite projects and people that I've worked with have been from the U.K. … I find it increasingly difficult to create here in America because the atmosphere is not conducive to my sensibilities as an artist. The quality of life in the U.K. suits me much better not only as an artist, but as a human being.'
Reaction to Trump is even being felt in the production of British content, which some say has the potential to fill a void left by the current play-it-safe-at-all-costs mentality in the American entertainment industry. As Hollywood in the Trump age becomes more risk-averse, insiders say the U.K. isn't afraid of embracing tough material, and boundary-pushing only reaffirms what execs already believe about Britain: It is the best country for content on the small screen right now, and examples abound, from Black Mirror to Baby Reindeer.
'We are unmatched in the world for what we do in this space,' BFI chair and Apple TV+ European creative director Jay Hunt said late last year. 'I mean literally unmatched. To sit at the Emmys [where Apple TV+ hit Slow Horses took home best writing for a drama series in 2024] or the Oscars a couple of years ago and just hear British accent after British accent walking up onstage … I just want to keep doing something that fuels that, because this is really precious.'
Many believe that backlash to Trump's DEI crackdown could end up having a positive effect on minorities and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds seeking access to the industry in the more welcoming U.K. Patel offers Netflix's Adolescence as an example of how British producers can fight back against Trump's attacks on diversity — and have real-world impact in the process.
'[Adolescence star Owen Cooper] and the child actors were purposefully chosen for those roles as they hadn't gone through that traditional [upper middle class] drama route. They wanted to create opportunities for social mobility,' she says of the timely Brit drama. 'It's something that we're fully embracing in the U.K.' The impact of the show has been so profound that it has been discussed in Parliament and is now being screened in schools across the U.K. in an effort to combat knife violence and the toxic influence of the online 'manosphere' on young boys.
Similarly, ITV's Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office (2024) was a show for public broadcast that had the country in an uproar. The Peabody Award winner spotlighted how hundreds of sub-postmasters were wrongly convicted of theft — the true cause was a faulty IT system — between 1999 and 2015. The series was so popular and the scandal it depicted so outrageous that it prompted the British government to exonerate the sub-postmasters and compensate them in thousands of pounds. The former Post Office boss Paula Vennells was publicly vilified and stripped of her CBE. Film and television can provoke political and societal change in the U.K., Patel says, which isn't always the case in other countries: 'We can be provocative.'
According to Hunt, Idris Elba's 2010 casting on Luther as the BBC One's first Black lead was a turning point for the industry. 'You go into people's homes, and you change the way they think about the country that they live in,' she said while discussing how British film and TV can 'change the world.' She adds, 'It's profoundly important that we find a way, particularly in quite a divided society, that communities across the U.K. see themselves onscreen and see their stories onscreen, and we know it's utterly game-changing.'
While the full extent of Trump's impact remains to be seen, London's dominance on the global film and television stage outdates his return to politics' biggest job, and it shows no signs of abating. Studio facilities are booked solid for years, the various cost savings will no doubt become even more valuable as the trade wars impact the global economy, and London's streets will continue to crawl with Hollywood talent (even if their posh hotels aren't on fire).
For some, London will never truly replace Hollywood, but the city's production boom certainly has the rest of the world — and President Trump, it appears — a little jealous.
'From my discussions that I've had with colleagues and friends in the U.S.,' Patel says, 'we are definitely the new Hollywood. I've got some contacts for the big streamers overseas, and what they've said to me is London is the next big stage, and they want to be here.'
A version of this story appeared in the May 7 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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