Another production company is shedding space in Los Angeles as the entertainment industry grapples with increased costs and competition.
Miramax, the film and television studio known for such productions as "Shakespeare in Love” and “Pulp Fiction,” signed an office lease totaling 16,000 square feet for its new headquarters at The Lot at Formosa, a site with its roots in the earliest days of moviemaking. The property is a West Hollywood production campus once home to the production of “West Side Story” and the offices of directors including Howard Hughes and George Lucas.
Miramax's new digs are about 40% smaller than the company's previous Los Angeles headquarters, a 27,000-square-foot space at 1901 Avenue of the Stars in Century City.
The global entertainment industry is still reeling from the writer’s and actor’s strikes of 2023 along with shifts in how people consume content. In Los Angeles, film and television production continued to fall in 2024 after an already steep drop in 2023, with levels down 5% in the third quarter of 2024 compared with the year-ago period, according to production tracking service FilmLA.
Meanwhile, office demand in the city remains softer than ever, and retrenching entertainment firms are still shedding jobs locally, according to Ryan Patap, CoStar senior director of market analytics for Los Angeles.
“With the woes facing the entertainment industry, the downsizing trend will dominate the future,” Patap said.
Miramax’s new home
Miramax is leaving the more diverse corporate neighborhood of Century City for a property that spotlights entertainment tenants in Hollywood.
CIM Group acquired The Lot at Formosa in 2007, and has since modernized and expanded the property into a 200,000-square-foot hub including seven soundstages, creative offices and parking lots.
Streamers such as Showtime and Max lease the production space for shows like "True Blood" and "Euphoria."
The 11-acre site at 1041 N. Formosa Ave. opened in 1918, becoming the location of Pickford-Fairbanks studios, owned by silent film stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. The studio was renamed United Artists in 1927 and Samuel Goldwyn Studios in 1955.
In the 1980s, Warner Brothers studios took over the lot and filmed prime-time television shows there like "Dynasty" and "The Love Boat."
Second act
Miramax, owned by the Walt Disney Co. and Qatar-based sports entertainment operator BeIn, replaced its leadership in August, adding a new president from MGM's motion picture group.
The company, whose current roster of television productions includes the hit Netflix series “The Gentlemen,” wants to produce more acclaimed films in an increasingly competitive market, according to reports, and is still rebuilding its reputation in the wake of headlines caused by the firm's founder, Harvey Weinstein.
Headcounts are shrinking across the industry as firms adjust to the new demands of a streaming-dominating industry, according to Brian Frons, the former head of ABC Daytime and a current professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management.
Amazon Studios, Disney's Pixar division, Fox Entertainment, Paramount Studios and Warner Bros. Discovery are among the major players that announced job cuts in 2024.
Miramax's new neighborhood has lower rents than its current headquarters in Century City, where the average asking rent is $80 per square foot, nearly double the West Hollywood average.
Vacancy rates in Century City are on the climb, hitting 16% in the fourth quarter of 2024, up from 15% a year ago, according to CoStar data. In West Hollywood, meanwhile, the office vacancy rate is down slightly to 12% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
For the record
CIM Group was represented in-house in the transaction by Blake Eckert, in association with JLL's Nicole Mihalka and Hayley Blockley. Pat Moody and Clay Hammerstein of CBRE represented Miramax.