Some Y'allywood Studio Owners Giving Up On Hollywood, Pivoting To Other Uses

The floor of Atlanta Filmworks Studio and Stages has seen its share of spatter from zombie kills as humans desperately fought for their survival while cameras rolled. 

The 57K SF studio was once the home of several AMC shows, including spinoffs of The Walking Dead. 

In the same space, children will soon bounce off trampolines, play laser tag, and climb indoor ropes courses in a Thrillz indoor amusement park. This is how Atlanta Filmworks’ investment in the space will survive.

The studio is the latest among a slew of former film and TV studios in Metro Atlanta forced to find alternative uses amid a prolonged U.S. film and television production slump.

When the studio opened its doors in 2013 as part of a rapid expansion of studio space in the area, AMC Studios signed a long-term lease. In 2023, however, AMC terminated its lease, leaving the studio bare of productions, according to Glenn Murer, Atlanta Filmworks’ owner and partner.

Murer said he is no longer betting on Hollywood for a business plan for the space. Thrillz signed a 10-year lease, and he is moving forward with that. 

“They’re building out the space now,” Murer said. “For me, I lost a tenant, and I found a new tenant.” 

Atlanta Filmworks isn’t alone. Bisnow has found several former Metro Atlanta film and TV production spaces in similar situations, recently converted to or being marketed for other uses.

The Georgia Film Office, the state agency tasked with attracting film productions, lists some 4.2M SF of stage space throughout the state. The state doesn’t track the number of studios that convert to other business models.

Raulet Property Partners Vice President John Raulet has had a front-row seat to the studio shrinkage. 

At its peak as a studio operator, Raulet Property commanded five studios in Metro Atlanta. Today, the real estate firm only operates one: Mailing Avenue Stageworks.

Most recently, Raulet leased out 3735 Atlanta Industrial Parkway, a 92K SF industrial building that had been used by Warner Bros., to Sto Corp., a Germany-based architectural products company. The firm’s Westside Stageworks at 6110 Boat Rock Blvd., a 121K SF facility, is now under contract to an unnamed cabinetmaker, Raulet said.

Raulet helps broker conversion deals for other studios, too. This includes working with General Wholesale Co., a beer and wine wholesaler, to market an 89K SF facility at 1271 Tacoma Drive, once owned by a Los Angeles studio operator. 

Raulet said the landlords he was working with no longer bank on a Georgia resurgence in film and television production, even though the state offers some of the most lucrative tax credits in the U.S.

General Wholesale Co.’s owner wants nothing to do with film right now, Raulet said.

“I don’t think he would do a film deal if one approached him,” Raulet said. “Someone like that doesn’t care about what’s going on in Hollywood. They just want a rent check.”

Television and film production in Georgia hasn’t picked up significantly in the wake of a pair of 2023 strikes by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and the Writers Guild of America. 

At its peak in 2022, spending by production companies had reached $4.4B in Atlanta. By fiscal year 2024, it fell to $2.6B, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported. It has since eroded further to $2.3B at the close of fiscal year 2025, according to the Georgia Film Office.

There are some 25 productions underway in the state, the vast majority of which are reality television shows, which typically have much smaller budgets than tentpole films.

Raulet said the trickle of production is making studios compete against one another for business. Raulet’s lone remaining studio is getting a quarter of what it used to get in rent for productions. 

“Now, everybody is just basically giving away space just to get a warm body in,” he said. “The studios know that everybody is struggling, so they’re going to ask for the world.”

Georgia isn’t alone in feeling the pinch of production pullback, either.

There was a 29% drop from 2022 to 2024 in films and television series with budgets above $40M that began shooting in the U.S., The Wall Street Journal previously reported, citing data from ProdPro, a film production data analytics firm. 

And FilmLA, the film commission for Los Angeles and LA County, reported that productions declined more than 13% year-over-year in the LA area in the third quarter, Deadline reported.

The scale and volume of productions have gone steadily down, and production has also flocked overseas to take advantage of cheaper labor and more robust tax incentives, according to The New York Times.

This has left local studio developers and owners in the lurch. Large-space developers in general are looking at adaptive reuse possibilities, Woodvale Managing Partner Rahim Charania said. 

Charania sold off 10 acres of his firm’s lot at its Cinelease Studios - Three Ring complex to the city of Covington, which plans to develop a utilities campus. The sale includes two of the studio buildings on the campus, The Covington News reported. 

Charania said this dip in production isn’t short-term.

“I think it is a structural shift in the way content is produced,” he said. “I don’t think we know what the end result of this is going to be, but people who have assets, they can't afford to wait and see.”