“Looting” is a word you use when a company won’t sit still while you regulate, tax, and sue it. Capital leaving is not theft. Theft is taking something that isn’t yours. A firm shopping for a cheaper, friendlier jurisdiction is just doing what every sane buyer does.
The California film “ecology” argument is nostalgia. The cluster existed because of weather, lots, skilled trade that were already in Cali, and a century of sunk infrastructure. It did not stay because the state was uniquely liberal and welcoming (lol!). It is leaving because other places undercut California on cost, permitting, housing, and political risk. FilmLA still shows on-location days well below the five-year average even after Sacramento tripled the tax-credit program. Feature days keep falling. Crew jobs have been shredded for years. That is not a vibe from Nashville. That is the ledger and the facts talking, commie-boy.
“Grandstanding?”. Nah, I stand by it. A 12-state coalition led by California trying to kill a $111 billion merger is not a gentle reminder about antitrust. It is a political weapon. Leaving is how companies behave when the home state treats them as a hostage.
“International talent will never go to the Confederate South” is the same snobbery that has been wrong about Atlanta for twenty years. Georgia built a real production machine with uncapped credits. Talent follows work and after-tax pay, not wellness rankings. Nashville already has a music-industrial complex, scoring stages going in, no state wage income tax, cheaper housing, and a growing production cluster. Hot chicken is not the only thing they ship, but nice cheap shot.
Oak Ridge “doesn’t count because government built it” is a revealing comment about you. You only count innovation when it flatters your Marxist story. The rest of the country is allowed to have labs, studios, and companies without a permission slip from the Bay or Washington.
Nobody promised better movies from a zip-code change. The claim is narrower: California’s cost stack and political theater make it harder to greenlight, finish, and recoup product. If Paramount can spend the same dollar on more shooting days and less legal theater, the product side gets a better shot. If California wants the ecology to stay, stop making the habitat expensive and hostile. Firms do not owe you their headquarters because your grandparents filmed there.