The Bay State’s dream of becoming “Hollywood East” has ended in a botched audition.

After years of being flooded with more films and stars than it could handle, Massachusetts has suddenly fallen off the radar screens of the major movie studios out in Los Angeles.

As 2010 draws to a close, just one sizable film has shot locally this year – a fraction of the bonanza shot locally over the past several years, from “The Town” and “Gone Baby Gone,” to “Mall Cop” and “The Pink Panther 2.”

So what’s to blame?

A threat earlier this year by our far-sighted state leaders to slash movie industry tax incentives – even as the local economy was still chewing up and spitting out jobs – likely scared off some productions. And the fact that a state like windswept Montana now outspends us more than three-to-one doesn’t help, either.

But larger entertainment industry forces are at work here which could quash any hopes of a quick rebound in 2011 and beyond.

“It’s a complete disaster,” said Sam Weisman, a veteran producer, director and chair of the Massachusetts Sports and Entertainment Commission, of the increasingly bottom-line driven way the industry’s few remaining studios are looking at the business. “It has become a business run by bean-counters.”

There’s certainly been a lot of hype lately about the movie business, with Ben Affleck’s glitzy Fenway Park premiere of “The Town” stealing the show in September. It is just one of several big films, including “Shutter Island” and “The Social Network” that all hit theaters this year, but were filmed here in 2008 and 2009.

But when we look at the books for 2010, there are just one or two sizeable films under production locally.

And that comes after years in which the number of films shot locally steadily expanded, bringing in more than a billion dollars worth of business to towns and cities across the state. If it proves to be a long-term phenomenon, this shift is likely to have sweeping ramifications.

Revised Expectations

For starters, any hopes remaining by developers of turning the old naval air station in Weymouth or a golf course in Plymouth into giant movie production complexes are all but dead.

Even when films were coming here regularly, the grand plans for building mini-Hollywoods in these lunch-bucket, South Shore towns struck more than a few film industry insiders as a bit fanciful. I think the only really viable proposal left is the Pappas family development in South Boston, which is considering plans for a small, targeted, studio project for whatever films keep landing here.

But the movie invasion did help create a mini industry here, and that – not just fantasy studio projects – is also endangered now.

The number of trained film hands working on everything from lighting to hauling equipment more than tripled to 1,000 strong. Given the unemployment rate for blue collar workers of all stripes, these are relatively high-paying jobs that will be sorely missed if this drought becomes permanent.

Certainly, this is one issue where it would be easy to play the blame game.

Gov. Deval Patrick might be an easy scapegoat. After all, he arguably got the downhill slide rolling last winter, when he proposed slashing the Bay State’s relatively generous film credit.

While he was quickly reversed by the Legislature, this threat cast a cloud over the local film business right at the time movie industry moguls were figuring out where to shoot various films in 2010.

The budget for the Massachusetts Film Office was also axed – it’s now down to a Podunk-level $150,000 a year. Montana spends well over $500,000 on its film office, by contrast.

But let’s face it, Patrick hasn’t exactly had it easy, trying to plug a multibillion-dollar budget gap and keep basic social service programs intact.

Riding The Wave

But all the blame can’t be laid at the feet of politicians just having a bad day. Instead, a series of other, more complex factors are at work here.

Past darlings of the film industry – places like Canada and storm- and oil spill-battered Louisiana – have made a comeback, aggressively pursuing Hollywood again.

There’s also been a shift in strategy at the major film studios. We aren’t talking any brilliant new strategy, but rather a cover-your-you-know-what effort by Hollywood’s bean counters.

Even in sunny Los Angeles, no one really wants to lose their job these days. And for studio executives, the safest thing to do is focus on one big blockbuster. This home run approach is much easier to focus on – and desperately pump up into some sort of success – than spreading your attention over four to five films, some of which will inevitably fizzle or flop.

The bad news is, Massachusetts did well in luring those mid-sized productions to town.

“Frankly, we caught a wave,” Weisman notes. “We started our credit at a time when the movie industry was still making a large number of movies in that middle range.”

Maybe a little realism, rather than a wholesale rethink, is what is needed here.

Goodbye – and good riddance, frankly – to all that talk about “Hollywood East.” Still, there’s no need to gut all those movie industry tax credits – if films don’t come here, they won’t use them. But it makes sense to keep the door open, if and when Hollywood does come knocking.

The movie business, like a lot of other industries, is going through some wrenching changes, with technology likely to play a key role in its future. With our plethora of technology, top universities, research talent and venture capitalists, that could eventually mean a bigger role again someday for Massachusetts.

But getting there could mean a rocky few years ahead.