How Hollywood stopped making movies in Hollywood

📝 Discussion Summary (Click to expand)

Key Themes

Production shifting overseas due to tax incentives and cost pressures

"Money is money, and if you can film in the UK where you get tax incentives and lower costs there's no reason to film in Hollywood." – epolanski
The high cost of living and housing in LA forces talent and crew to relocate

"I worked in Los Angeles doing animation and VFX software for 33 years, and left 5 years ago as the cost of living there made no sense, and my prospects for work became nomadic..." – bsenftner
AI threatens to upend Hollywood's labor model, creating “slop” and displacing workers

"In the next decade, AI will be gutting every industry associated with Hollywood other than nvidia and tmsc." – smallstepforman

🚀 Project Ideas

Eliminate “Hollywood accounting” opacity by logging every revenue and expense on a public ledger.
Give creators (actors, VFX artists, indie producers) real‑time visibility of their profit participation.

Key	Value
Target Audience	Film producers, actors, VFX artists, investors
Core Feature	Blockchain ledger + smart contracts that auto‑distribute profit share
Tech Stack	Solidity/Ethereum, IPFS for immutable storage, React frontend, Web3 wallet integration
Difficulty	High
Monetization	Revenue-ready: Subscription tier for studios + 0.1% transaction fee on payouts

HN commenters repeatedly cite “Hollywood accounting” as a major pain point (e.g., “the whole point of art is a framing of an idea… but they still need to pay the bills”).
Provides clear, auditable royalty statements, which could restore trust and enable fairer deals for talent.

Offer an AI‑driven platform that identifies the highest‑value tax incentives across jurisdictions in real time.
Automate compliance workflows to reduce risk of missed subsidies and audit penalties.

Key	Value
Target Audience	Production companies, location scouts, finance managers
Core Feature	AI database of worldwide tax credits, eligibility scoring, automated filing integration
Tech Stack	Python backend, PostgreSQL, ML models for credit scoring, REST APIs to government portals
Difficulty	Medium
Monetization	Revenue-ready: 0.5% of the evaluated credit value as a service fee

Discussion highlights the “race to the bottom” in tax incentives (“they’re eyeing three $1B+ box office earners back to back”) and how credits equate to “tens of millions of dollars”.
Enables studios to maximize subsidies without manually researching each region, saving both money and time.

Provide a cloud‑based virtual production ecosystem where indie teams can collaborate globally using AI‑enhanced pre‑visualization and shared 3D assets.
Reduce reliance on physical soundstages and overseas shooting logistics.

Key	Value
Target Audience	Indie filmmakers, boutique VFX houses, advertising agencies
Core Feature	End‑to‑end workflow: AI pre‑vis, live‑link to cloud Unreal Engine, remote motion‑capture streaming, collaborative asset library
Tech Stack	Unreal Engine Cloud, AWS MediaLive, WebRTC, Stable Diffusion video/AI generation models
Difficulty	Medium
Monetization	Revenue-ready: Pay‑as‑you‑go compute credits + subscription for premium asset packs

Community talks about AI moving from “prompt hobby” to replacing crews (“the next shift will be that gen AI video will become good enough to be considered the master”).
Offers a practical path for creators to produce high‑quality visuals without the cost of physical stages, aligning with the desire for “hyper small budget shows to rival millions‑dollar productions.”