West Hollywood Keeps the Cameras Rolling

West Hollywood has played a lot of roles over the years.

Its streets, hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, homes, architecture, and unmistakable stretches of the Sunset Strip, Santa Monica Boulevard, and Design District have appeared on screens large and small, sometimes playing themselves and sometimes standing in for someplace entirely different.

Behind those productions is the City of West Hollywood’s Film Office, helping productions turn the City into a set while balancing the needs of productions with maintaining quality of life for the residents and businesses that call West Hollywood home.

Right now, the City is making an even bigger push to keep the cameras rolling.

In July 2026, the City of West Hollywood launched a one-year Film Permit Administrative Fee Waiver Program, eliminating the City’s administrative permit fee for qualifying productions through June 30, 2027. The pilot program is part of a broader effort to support Southern California’s entertainment industry, attract location filming, and strengthen West Hollywood’s creative economy.

The timing is significant. As film and television production throughout the Los Angeles region has faced challenges, the City of West Hollywood has reaffirmed its commitment to being a film-friendly city and to making the permitting process as accessible and production-friendly as possible.

Production isn’t just about what eventually appears on screen. A production filming on location in West Hollywood can mean an uptick in business for hotels, restaurants, retailers, vendors, parking facilities, location owners, and scores of entertainment-industry workers. During Fiscal Year 2024-2025 alone, the City of West Hollywood issued more than 120 production permits.

West Hollywood on Screen

If West Hollywood looks familiar, there’s a good chance you’ve seen it before from your living room sofa or in a movie theater. Over the years, the City has provided locations for an impressive range of film and television productions. Productions filmed in West Hollywood include Modern Family, Entourage, Parks and Recreation, Project Runway, America’s Next Top Model, Erin Brockovich, Collateral, The Green Hornet, and Fame. More recently, the City has welcomed crews from The Morning Show, Hacks, All’s Fair, Daisy Jones & The Six, Selling Sunset, The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Vanderpump Rules, and Netflix’s Animals.

Sometimes West Hollywood itself becomes part of the cast. The Sunset Strip, Santa Monica Boulevard, and the Design District feature distinctive hotels, restaurants, clubs, and neighborhood streets that give productions a remarkably diverse collection of looks within just 1.9 square miles. From scripted dramas and comedies to reality television, commercials, and music videos, productions have long discovered that West Hollywood can play plenty of characters. Including, quite convincingly, itself.

Making Filming Happen

For productions, the West Hollywood Film Office serves as a one-stop starting point for navigating filming within the City's 1.9 square miles.

Generally, filming on either public or private property requires a City film permit. The City’s Film Office works directly with productions to navigate the permitting process, determine potential impacts, coordinate requirements, and help productions and location scouts understand everything from parking and neighborhood notification to insurance and public safety needs.

The Film Office coordinates with additional agencies when necessary. Depending on the scope of a production, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department deputies may be assigned for safety and traffic needs, and the Los Angeles County Fire Department may require a fire safety officer or advisor.

Productions of All Sizes

The City of West Hollywood’s film-friendly approach isn’t reserved for major studios and large productions.

The Film Office offers a Low-Impact Filming Program designed for smaller productions, with reduced or waived fees available for qualifying shoots. Student filmmakers may also qualify for waived permit fees when productions meet City requirements.

For productions filming over multiple days, the City’s Blanket Permit Program can simplify the process by allowing qualifying productions to operate under a single permit that can be updated for as many as 14 consecutive days.

The current administrative fee waiver program goes another step further. Through June 30, 2027, the City’s standard administrative fee for motion picture and video photography — currently listed at $1,288 per standard permit — is waived. Other production-related costs may still apply depending on a production’s needs, including public-property use, street activity, law enforcement, fire safety, or other special requirements.

The City will evaluate the pilot program to determine how effectively the waiver encourages additional production and supports local economic development.

A City Made for the Screen

Of course, there’s another reason productions look toward West Hollywood: it looks good on camera. With so much variety in a small geographic footprint, West Hollywood is a natural backdrop for television, film, commercials, music videos, photography, and other productions. Audiences around the world get a glimpse of the City’s incredible businesses, architecture, neighborhoods, nightlife, and unmistakable personality.

For the City of West Hollywood, supporting filming is about more than issuing permits. It’s about supporting entertainment workers, generating economic activity for the local economy, showcasing the City to audiences worldwide, and maintaining a connection to an industry that has helped shape the identity of the region for generations.

Learn more about filming in the City of West Hollywood and about the City’s Film Permit Administrative Fee Waiver Program on the City’s website.