The United States has lost significant ground in film and television production over the past quarter-century, according to a new report highlighting the industry’s growing reliance on overseas locations.
Twenty-five years ago, studios spent 74% of their film production budgets in the US. That figure has since fallen to 42%, according to research commissioned by a coalition of Hollywood unions, including IATSE, the Directors Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA. Television’s domestic share has dropped by roughly one-third, from 94% to 64%.
The findings arrive as Paramount Skydance is expected to complete its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday. Following the deal, the company is expected to retire the Paramount Skydance name and operate as “Skydance Corporation.”
The report was released while Congress weighs whether a federal production incentive of 20% to 30% could help revive film and television activity in the US. Supporters argue that American productions are increasingly competing with subsidies offered by countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom, and that state-level incentives alone are insufficient.
Lawmakers have been examining the decline in US production jobs since the end of the Peak TV era in 2022.
But the EY study suggests the problem extends well beyond the post-2022 slowdown. It traces the industry’s weakening domestic position to the early 2000s, when film and television production began rapidly expanding into a global business.
Although the total volume of production has increased sharply, the report finds that the US now accounts for a smaller share of that activity.
Researchers examined higher-cost films and television episodes, including movies with production budgets of at least $5 million in 2025 dollars. The study also covered TV episodes costing $1 million or more when running 40 minutes or less, and at least $1.7 million when running longer than 40 minutes.
Over the past 25 years, major studios’ film production spending grew from $3 billion to $7 billion. Television spending climbed even more dramatically, rising from $933 million to $8.4 billion.
Still, the report cautioned that direct comparisons are difficult because the television business looks fundamentally different today than it did in the early 2000s.
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“The rise of streaming fundamentally altered production scale, budgets, season lengths, and release models, creating discontinuities in what constitutes a comparable television series across periods,” the report said.
The study measures how much production has moved overseas, but it does not identify the specific reasons behind those decisions.
The shift has been especially pronounced among big-budget films, which make up a disproportionate share of the production spending that has left the US.
The US share of production for the 25 most expensive films fell from 74% to 34% over the past 25 years. Those movies represented about one-quarter of all films made by major studios, yet accounted for half of the crew employment and roughly two-thirds of total budgets.
“This highlights that production budgets are heavily concentrated within a small subset of films,” the report said. “Patterns observed within this group generally reflect the broader analysis trends, albeit with a somewhat larger decline.”
According to the report, the US would have captured an additional $4 billion in annual film and television production spending if its share of the business had remained unchanged over the past 25 years.
The Motion Picture Association released a separate study last month projecting that a federal incentive could generate approximately $22 billion in domestic production spending each year by 2035. The report warned that without congressional action, the US portion of the global production market is likely to keep shrinking.
Hollywood unions are scheduled to join Sen. Adam Schiff and other Democrats at a protest in Glendale, California, on Tuesday.
Schiff and fellow lawmakers have introduced a federal tax-credit proposal designed to provide studios with a substantial production incentive.
With President Donald Trump backing the measure, the bill is expected to become law by the end of 2026.
