Top Hollywood Producer Fleeing LA Over Crime, High Taxes: ‘It’s Not the Pandemic’

Top-flight Hollywood producer Ryan Kavanaugh said he’s fleeing Los Angeles due to a litany of issues, including crime, high taxes, and homelessness, he admitted in a recent interview.

Kavanaugh—who has produced “The Social Network,” “Hancock,” “Limitless,” and dozens of others—told TheWrap that while he’s a lifelong Los Angeles resident, he’s picking up his family and moving his business headquarters to Florida.

“I grew up here, I grew up in Brentwood, and I was allowed to be on the streets,” Kavanaugh said. “I would never let my kids walk (alone) in Brentwood—how many times do you have to be out in Los Angeles and see feces in the streets before you just don’t want to be here anymore?”

Kavanaugh said he doesn’t believe COVID-19 restrictions are the reason why.

“It’s not the pandemic, it’s policy,” he said.

Some have speculated that the murder of Jacqueline Avant, the wife of music executive Clarence Avant, by a home intruder in her Beverly Hills home may serve as a catalyst for some Hollywood elites’ desire to move out of Southern California.

“A new tipping point emerged late last year with the murder of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant in her Beverly Hills home,” Gene Del Vecchio, who is an adjunct professor of marketing at USC’s Marshall School of Business, told the publication.

“It so shocked the protected community that even the liberal Beverly Hills city council voted to recall the liberal Los Angeles district attorney George Gascon,” Del Vecchio continued, referring to the left-wing district attorney who has been panned for what critics have said are soft-on-crime policies. “When crime hits home, it becomes personal, and people act by either fighting, as with the Gascon recall, or by leaving.”

Other than Kavanaugh, notably, UFC commentator and podcaster Joe Rogan moved from the Los Angeles area to Texas in 2021. Before moving, Rogan similarly cited citywide policies that appear to exacerbate crime, homelessness, drug use, and recidivism.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, toured the Union Pacific railroad tracks in Los Angeles in mid-January after thousands of goods were stolen from shipping containers.

“The images looked like a Third World country,” Newsom told reporters on Jan. 21. “What you saw here in the last week is just not acceptable. So, I took off the suit and tie and said I’m coming because I couldn’t take it. I can’t turn on the news anymore. What the hell is going on?”