Far From Home: The Fight For Location Perks, Family Visits, 5-Star Travel
As shoots leave L.A., reps spill who's 'stuck in the Dark Ages', who's not, the most coveted reward and the creature comforts no one can score
Ashley Cullins writes for paid subscribers. She recently interviewed CEO Tom Quinn on how he built Neon and the art of getting an original film greenlight in 2025. You can reach her at ashley@theankler.com
Before we dig into this week’s issue, I just wanted to take a moment to commemorate Dealmakers’ first anniversary. We launched this newsletter one year ago today, and it has been a delight to nerd out on the inner workings of Hollywood contracts and dig into the weeds of negotiations with you and for you. Thank you for your readership and support!
White Lotus created an onslaught of memorable water cooler moments this season, from Parker Posey’s tsunami of drawly one-liners to Carrie Coon’s Team USA-worthy sprinting to Walton Goggins’ reaction to that Sam Rockwell monologue.
Even if you haven’t seen the show, it’s been hard to miss the gifs, memes and clips from interviews with the cast talking about their seven months in Thailand. That extended sojourn is a reminder that, as glamorous as staying in a Four Seasons on the Koh Samui beach may seem, the stars were more than 8,000 miles from L.A. from February to August 2024.
Mike White’s dark comedy is set abroad as part of the story, but often locations for series and films are determined by how the math shakes out after factoring in tax incentives. According to FilmLA’s latest on-location production report released April 14, on-location shoots in the greater L.A. area declined 30.5 percent for TV and 28.9 percent for film in Q1 of this year compared with Q1 2024.
“You’re obligated to project outlandish profits in order to appease investors, and the way to do that when the audience is shrinking is to make things more cheaply. That’s why you see so many [productions] going overseas currently,” says one top studio exec, who was more blunt about the L.A. exodus (I covered the effort to stanch the bleeding last September) than I’ve heard before, describing Hollywood as “weirdly investor-obsessed” and now a quarterly business.
With work increasingly requiring leaving home, agents and lawyers’ role is now to mitigate how much showrunners, directors and actors have to uproot their lives as studios “chase the rebate,” as the exec says. A talent's travel, accommodations, perks and so forth are all subject to negotiation — and now there's more to negotiate than ever before.
In this issue, we’ll dive into:
The best and worst networks and studios at meeting talent demands
How lawyers secure time off for clients away from the location
One thing the streamers won’t budge on
The perk so popular it sparked a discount version
Why reps still have to fight for talent’s families to be together
How some stars get to stay in L.A. — and the forces fighting against local production
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