As production flees overseas and jobs disappear at home, a fully American-made film offers a path forward.
For years, I helped Hollywood chase the world … And now I regret it.
I sat in many rooms where movie deals were struck to open China’s market and others around the world, attract international audiences, and globalize production efficiencies. We believed we were building a more efficient entertainment industry without borders, powered by billions of consumers, cheap labor, and foreign incentives.
In many ways, we succeeded – especially by short-term financial measures. But for America’s longer-term interests, we failed miserably.
We told ourselves global commerce would lead to convergence, better monetization, and shared values. Instead, we created a slow-moving trainwreck of imbalance. Markets like China protected their domestic film industries with quotas, censorship, and restricted revenue shares, while Hollywood recklessly adapted for access. Scripts were adjusted. Pro-American themes, even in their most subtle forms, were nullified. Storylines softened. Creative decisions bent to the realities of mandates from the Middle Kingdom to the Middle East. This creative-stifling behavior complemented Hollywood’s fervent drive to keep production costs low by finding cheaper labor and grander incentives than America provided. Capitalism trumped patriotism, but at the time it simply felt like smart business.
Looking back, however, the cost is now painfully clear.
Los Angeles alone has lost more than 40,000 film and television jobs in recent years – roughly a quarter of its entertainment workforce. Production employment is down nearly 30% since 2022. On-location filming has dropped more than 20% in the last year alone and nearly 40% over the past decade. Atlanta – once the crown jewel of “Hollywood South” – saw production spending collapse from $4.4 billion in 2022 to roughly $2.3 billion today, a nearly 50% drop.
Hollywood offshores more than 60% of its production annually now. As a result, America has lost a major economic engine along with significant global cultural influence. Hollywood didn’t slowly decline. It hollowed out – as did the industry’s appetite to project pro-American idealism globally.
This isn’t a temporary slowdown. It’s deeply structural. Like many other industries, Hollywood chased efficiency and global scale for decades. Productions moved wherever incentives were strongest and labor was cheapest. Financing followed international capital. And foreign governments offered subsidies aggressively, pulling jobs, expertise, and infrastructure out of the United States – often while using ruthless protectionist policies to nurture their own domestic players.
The result was predictable. Reckless globalization didn’t just change where and how Hollywood’s films are made – it changed who makes them and stars in them too. Today, a disproportionate share of top-tier, box-office-leading English-speaking actors come from the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. American-born stars account for less than half of the industry’s biggest global draws, despite the United States representing roughly three-quarters of the English-speaking world. Studios increasingly cast British and Australian actors as Americans, not just for talent but for global market appeal.
Hollywood didn’t just export its films – it imported its priorities and American interests, favoring global optimization over domestic industry investment.
We assumed American dominance in entertainment was permanent. It isn’t. Even worse, many are OK with that.
If we want Hollywood to remain the global leader in storytelling, we must reinvest in the ecosystem that made it great: our workers, creatives, stories, and production infrastructure.
That’s exactly what I, along with a 1,000-plus fellow Americans, just did.
After years of writing and speaking on these issues, I produced “Bad Counselors,” a fish-out-of-water comedy starring Chris Klein, Matt Cornett, and Ramon Reed, directed by Chris Dowling. The collective vision and the resulting film proved what should have been obvious: What matters most isn’t just what’s on screen. It’s how it was made.
All 1,175 people who worked on “Bad Counselors” are American. Every creative – writers, director, producers, cast – is American. We shot entirely in the United States: North Carolina, Tennessee, and California. All pre- and post-production was completed in Texas, Tennessee, California, and North Carolina. The music is entirely American – from “Night Ranger” to “Lifehouse” to “Forrest Frank.” The film was financed by an American studio, Loam Entertainment, and produced by American companies Loam, Zero Gravity, and Narrow Gate.
None of this was accidental. It was intentional. It wasn’t the cheapest way to make a movie. It wasn’t the easiest either. But it was the right one. Because at some point, belief must turn into action.
For years we’ve talked about supporting American workers and rebuilding domestic industries. Yet Hollywood often failed to apply those principles to itself, optimizing for cost over community, incentives over infrastructure, and short-term gain over long-term strength.
When production leaves, jobs don’t just disappear – they take entire ecosystems with them. Equipment houses close. Post-production shrinks. Young talent loses the chance to learn the craft. Capability leaves with it.
That’s the real danger. Hollywood’s strength has never been just its intellectual property or global reach. It’s the depth of our talent, the maturity of our process, the mastery of our craft, the world-class infrastructure, and the great nation of the United States of America that supports it all. When we abandon the birthplace of moviemaking, we erode the highest-profile cultural and economic pillar of the United States.
Though modest in scale, “Bad Counselors” will release on 1,000-plus screens nationwide on July 23. The model behind it proves it’s still possible to make a great film entirely within the American creative economy, directly employing over a thousand Americans and boosting local economies across the United States.
At a time when more than 60% of major productions are made abroad, choosing to make a film entirely in America isn’t nostalgia – it’s a deliberate economic decision. And, most importantly, it’s a decision to make quality the priority.
Which raises a simple question: If we know what works, why aren’t we doing more of it?
This isn’t about shutting the world out. I’ve spent my career building bridges across markets and still believe in global collaboration. But only when it’s balanced. When one side protects its own domestic industry and the other doesn’t, the result isn’t partnership – it’s displacement.
I don’t regret the work I did helping Hollywood expand globally. It was done in good faith. But experience brings clarity, and clarity demands adjustment. “Bad Counselors” is part of that important journey.
It’s a fun, feel-good family comedy, the kind Hollywood used to make routinely. If audiences want more films like it – entertaining, broadly appealing, emotionally fulfilling, inspirational, and 100% built by American crews and creators – the path forward is simple: Show up and support them.
Because in the end, this isn’t just about how films are made. It’s about whether we choose to invest in the people who make them.
Hollywood doesn’t need to retreat from the world. But it does need to remember where its horsepower comes from – American actors, writers, stories, crews, musicians, innovators, locations, infrastructure, and communities. That’s the engine that drives the greatest creative community in the world. Like any engine, it requires maintenance. For years we assumed it would take care of itself. Now we know it won’t.
If we want to sustain American leadership in entertainment, we must be deliberate about where we invest, where we produce, what stories we tell, and whom we employ. That’s exactly what we set out to do with “Bad Counselors.”
We bet the house on America, and America delivered a world-class film. On July 23, go see it at a theater near you. Remind Hollywood that American-made movies are truly the best in the world.
Chris Fenton is a longtime media executive, producer, USC Professor, and author of “Feeding the Dragon: Inside the Trillion Dollar Dilemma Facing Hollywood, the NBA, and American Business.” As an informal advisor to Congress’ Select Committee on China and a member of the U.S.-Asia Institute, Council on Foreign Relations, National Committee on U.S. China Relations, and Third Way Think Tank, he founded his own firm, FENTON · International Business Strategy & Communications, to help businesses thrive and scale in today’s complicated world. Follow him on X @TheDragonFeeder.
Reprinted with permission. Editorial comments expressed in this column are the sole opinion of the writer