It won’t be long now before we get to feast our eyes on a brand new entry on the 2024 TV schedule, the upcoming Stephen Amell-starring series Suits L.A. The new legal drama was, of course, brought on by the massive success of Aaron Korsh’s original series, Suits, which aired on USA for nine seasons and became a streaming hit on Netflix in the summer of 2023. That show notably did most of its filming in Toronto, but its spinoff had a million dollar reason to film somewhere completely different.
Why Isn’t Suits L.A. Filming In Canada?
If you pay any attention to pop culture at all, you will likely remember that the weeks (and months) after the first eight seasons of Suits hit one of the best streaming services, Netflix, in 2023, that it was nearly all people could talk about. The buzz was so great, in fact, that a spinoff by the creator of the USA network original was put on the fast track.
Suits L.A. was able to film its pilot early in 2024, with former Arrow and Heels star Stephen Amell even noting in March that leading the cast meant returning to Vancouver “almost 12 years to the day” that he shot the pilot for the CW superhero drama that made him famous.
However, once the new series was picked up by NBC and filming began in August on Season 1, they moved to the famed city of its title, Los Angeles, California. That switch from Canada to the USA was prompted by the California Film Commission (via IndieWire), which granted the production around $12 million in tax incentives to film in the Golden State.
I don’t know about you, but I’d certainly be willing to move any and every part of my life/work to a completely different country for that kind of cash.
This was part of a round of credits given out by the commission, which gave out $51.6 million to 19 productions, with Suits L.A. being the only television series to get an award through the Soundstage Filming Tax Credit Program. The spinoff (which is set in the same world of Korsh’s first legal drama) is expected to create 2,600 new jobs for the state and spend “$25 million in qualified wages and a total of $507 million in California qualified expenditures.”
Obviously, the upcoming legal drama (which could, at some point, feature appearances from original stars like Wendell Pierce and Sarah Rafferty, as many of them are open to it) wasn’t randomly granted this large tax credit, as it’s thought that the production will bring a lot of money and opportunities to the state, which is always a good thing.
Fans immediately began looking forward to a continuation of some sort after Suits landed on Netflix, and the star power of Stephen Amell (and others in the cast like The Walking Dead alum Josh McDermitt) could mean that the spinoff is a major hit that runs for several seasons (and brings in lots of cash and jobs) in its own right.
