In the response to a person asking why you don't move to the US, one of your reasons for staying in Britain was "The entire US entertainment industry is about to move to Britain!". Is that a thing that's happening that I just haven't heard about? Or was it a joke?
Oh that's real. Almost everything is filmed here now. All the Marvel stuff, all the Disney stuff, Barbie, Venom, House of the Dragon, it's all done here because we have very low wages, tax breaks for production companies, and very strict anti-union laws. You've also got Europe on your doorstep, which is great for location shoots, and Romania is a cheap place to film too - Wednesday is all shot in Bucharest and Django was filmed both there and in Transylvania. The notable exception is The Last of Us - Season 2 is going to shoot in Canada 'cause they need snow. It is, no jokes, cheaper to make a British street look like Las Vegas than it is to film in Las Vegas. Pinewood Studios in London is building an extension that'll make it the biggest movie studio in the world. I think the WGA and SAG strike victories will probably accelerate this trend: they can't replace Americans with AI, so they're going to replace them with Brits!
Which might sound good in theory to Brits cause it means jobs, but not if those jobs are exploitative. The stars, director, and the bosses will be Americans, but the drivers, makeup artists, crew, caterers, background artists, supporting players, editors and so on will be underpaid, overworked Brits, and the profits will go primarily to American companies.
I talked about this on tiktok a while ago:
