Television City and Orbital Studios launch LED volume in Los Angeles

This partnership addresses the critical need to retain high-budget productions in Los Angeles as high costs and tax incentives drive talent to rival hubs like Atlanta or London. By integrating high-end LED volumes directly into a legacy lot, Television City lowers the logistical barrier for series like FX’s 'The Drop' to utilize 'final-pixel' in-camera VFX without leaving the studio zone. For the broader industry, this signals a shift where virtual production is no longer a niche tool for sci-fi, but a core infrastructure requirement for maintaining regional competitiveness. Watch for whether specific LED-related labor hours trigger higher tiers of the state’s newly expanded production tax credit program.

The launch at Television City arrives as the complex begins a massive revitalization. Per Urbanize LA (January 2025), the Los Angeles City Council approved a $1 billion redevelopment plan for the 25-acre site led by Hackman Capital Partners. This modernization will add approximately 980,000 square feet of soundstages and production offices designed by Foster + Partners. The expansion is a direct response to a local production slump; according to FilmLA data (January 2025), Greater Los Angeles saw 23,480 on-location shoot days in 2024, a 36% decline from pre-pandemic benchmarks.

Simultaneously, California has aggressively refreshed its financial incentives to combat runaway production. Per Entertainment Partners (July 2025), Governor Gavin Newsom signed the 'Program 4.0' legislation, which expanded the state’s Film & TV Tax Credit Program to $750 million annually and introduced refundability for the first time. The new rules effectively increase the base credit for most TV projects from 20% to 35%, providing a stronger financial cushion for productions that utilize high-tech local infrastructure like LED volumes.

Orbital Studios is also diversifying its technological pipeline. According to recent technical briefings (April 2026), the studio has integrated Dell Precision workstations and NVIDIA RTX 6000 Blackwell GPUs to accelerate Unreal Engine rendering and AI-driven environment generation. This technical scale-up is part of a broader trend toward 'democratizing' virtual production. Grand View Research (May 2026) projects the global virtual production market will reach $12.3 billion by 2033, with the television segment currently holding the largest market share as streamers prioritize the cost-efficiency of digital environments over physical location shoots.