The landscape of film and television production has shifted significantly in recent years, with fewer projects being shot in Los Angeles despite the city’s longstanding status as a cinematic hub. A notable example is the upcoming Netflix miniseries adaptation of John Steinbeck’s "East of Eden," a story deeply rooted in California's Salinas Valley, which was filmed in New Zealand rather than on location. This decision highlights a broader trend of increasingly globalized production practices.

Historically, Los Angeles and its diverse surroundings served as versatile backdrops for countless films and television shows, often doubling as locations across the United States and around the world. Early Hollywood pioneers capitalized on Southern California’s year-round mild climate and wide variety of landscapes, enabling the transformation of Palos Verdes into Wales, Santa Barbara into the Spanish Riviera, or the Mojave Desert into the Sahara. Downtown Los Angeles, in particular, was a popular stand-in for many urban settings. Throughout the 1970s to the 1990s, the area’s neglected architecture and vacant buildings allowed filmmakers to recreate cities as varied as New York and Chicago, with certain streets providing Art Deco aesthetics, corporate office looks, or gritty industrial atmospheres.

Despite this rich production history, the city’s prominence as a primary filming location has declined. Recent data shows a nearly 50% drop in filming days in Los Angeles since 2019, accompanied by a loss of approximately 57,000 jobs in the local motion picture industry over the past four years. Other locations such as Atlanta, Vancouver, New Jersey, London, and Albuquerque have increasingly attracted productions, benefiting from various tax incentives and lower costs. Additionally, transformations in urban landscapes and real estate dynamics have impacted the availability and appeal of traditional filming sites within Los Angeles.

The choice to shoot "East of Eden" in New Zealand was influenced by similar concerns that Elia Kazan, director of the 1955 film adaptation, faced decades earlier. Kazan had found the Salinas Valley of his era too modernized to accurately portray the early 20th-century setting of the story. Consequently, much of the original production took place on meticulously crafted sets at the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, based on extensive research and historical photographs. Echoing this viewpoint, Zoe Kazan, who directs the current miniseries, noted that New Zealand offered more unspoiled landscapes resembling the period depicted in Steinbeck’s novel, given the significant changes in the Salinas Valley over time.

While Los Angeles remains a notable center for the entertainment industry, its role as a physical filming location continues to evolve. The city that once convincingly played a multitude of global cities now finds itself increasingly represented by production centers abroad and across the United States, reflecting broader changes in the economic and logistical landscape of filmmaking.