Twenty-five years on from 9/11, Hollywood Reporter reflects on how thoroughly the September 11 attacks reshaped Los Angeles and its film industry in the weeks that followed. Studios transformed into fortresses, with Warner Bros closing its gates and erecting concrete barriers, Fox building a cement maze, and Paramount guards checking under cars with mirrors, as executives feared the backlots could become terrorist targets. The mood of fear also forced studios to delay or rework films whose plots suddenly seemed to echo real-world horror.

Disney postponed the Tim Allen comedy Big Trouble, about smuggling a nuclear device onto a plane, from September to April, while the Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins spy spoof Bad Company, involving a suitcase bomb in Manhattan, was pushed from Christmas to June. Collateral Damage, an Arnold Schwarzenegger film about a firefighter whose family dies in a terrorist bombing, was delayed from October to February. The article also recalls a striking symbol of the era: a 60-foot billboard of a glamorous soldier holding an M-16, erected without permission at Wilshire and Westwood by artist Mike McNeilly, who cited free speech when the city ordered its removal.