Hollywood soundstages are getting a makeover for the scroll-all-day crowd. At Sunset Las Palmas in Hollywood, Sunset Studios has carved out prebuilt, standing sets so mobile-first, vertical dramas can roll in, flip on the lights, and start shooting one- to two-minute episodes made for smartphone bingeing. Creators can walk into a fully lit courtroom, apartment or bar and start cranking out micro-episodes instead of spending days dressing sets.
Short-form specialist Knockout Shorts is anchoring the effort, taking an 8,000-square-foot certified soundstage at the lot to pump out rapid-turn vertical series. It is a clear landlord play: if big-budget TV and streaming shoots are slowing, faster and cheaper phone-first productions might keep those stages busy instead of sitting dark.
As reported by CoStar, Sunset Studios is a division of Hudson Pacific Properties and built the turnkey environments with Los Angeles-based Knockout Shorts. The standing sets cover a courtroom, restaurant, apartment living room, bar and hospital, and they are meant to come "with permits in hand" so productions are not stuck filing new paperwork before the cameras roll. "These standing sets are about removing friction from the production process," Sean Griffin, senior vice president of Sunset Studios, told CoStar.
Mobile-First Drama Is Already A Business
These sets are not being built on a hunch. Portrait-mode, ultra-serialised shows that run just one to two minutes an episode are already a major business, distributed on apps like ReelShort and DramaBox and drawing huge global audiences. As TIME reported, titles such as "The Double Life of My Billionaire Husband" have pulled in hundreds of millions of views, with platforms leaning on in-app purchases and ad models to cash in.
Real Reel's market guide puts U.S. vertical drama revenues in the hundreds of millions. The format is deliberately engineered for repeat, mobile viewing, with cliffhanger-heavy, ultra-short episodes designed to keep viewers tapping for just one more chapter.
Why Landlords Are Reworking Lots
Behind the creative story is a very real real-estate problem. Nonprofit tracker FilmLA has reported that Los Angeles soundstage occupancy has fallen into the low-60 percent range, down from roughly 90 percent at the height of the streaming rush, and producers are now hunting for cheaper, faster shoots.
CoStar reported that Hudson Pacific chief Victor Coleman told investors the vertical format could scale into a $10 to $11 billion business annually in the United States. According to the same reporting, city officials have also talked about roughly $5 million in potential support for vertical productions. For studio landlords, it is all part of a broader strategy to keep stages active and diversify revenue while the old streaming-fueled model cools off.
What This Means For Hollywood Lots
Sunset Las Palmas sits among a tight cluster of historic Hollywood lots that Hudson Pacific has expanded in recent years as streaming growth reshaped studio real estate. Reporting from The Los Angeles Times and Commercial Observer shows landlords are rolling out more turnkey, support-rich campuses to lure productions back to town.
Those standing sets at Sunset Las Palmas fit neatly into that strategy. They are not just for bite-size vertical dramas, but also for commercials, test shoots and traditional pickup work. All of that can help fill the calendar during the quiet stretches between larger bookings, giving Hollywood lots one more way to survive the swings of the content economy.
