Donald Trump vows to help ‘troubled’ Hollywood with Mel Gibson, Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone
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Donald Trump wants to make Hollywood “bigger, better and stronger” and has cast Mel Gibson, Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone as stars of what he is calling his “Special Ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California.”. On Wednesday, the President-elect announced on his social media site that the three actors would be his eyes and ears to the moviemaking town.
“It will again be, like The United States of America itself, The Golden Age of Hollywood!” he wrote on Truth Social. He also called the trio special envoys. Special ambassadors and envoys are typically chosen to respond to troubled hot spots like the Middle East, not California.
U.S. film and television production has been hampered in recent years, with setbacks from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hollywood guild strikes of 2023 and, in the past week, the ongoing wildfires in the Los Angeles area. Overall production in the U.S. was down 26% from 2021, according to data from ProdPro.
In the greater Los Angeles area, productions were down 5.6% from 2023 according to FilmLA, the lowest since 2020. This past October, Governor Gavin Newsom proposed expanding California’s Film & Television Tax Credit program to $750 million annually (up from $330 million). Other U.S. cities like Atlanta, New York, Chicago and San Francisco have used tax incentives to lure film and TV productions to their cities. Actor Mark Wahlberg is even making plans for a Las Vegas production hub.
