Hollywood California is NOT the center of the 3D universe by a long shot 
I’ve worked with and know many studios in South Africa, Australia, Singapore, the UK , France and many other european countries and the USA. and they have completely Drop LW down from there Main 3D tool to a bearly used one and some don’t use at all now,…
all over the last 5 or 6 years. :hmm:
I think it’s unfair to say Lightwave is still there ? when you don’t say what it’s used for ?
Zion and Flying space ships is the one and only time where it’s used for Hero shots
the rest only use LW as plugin to a Maya, XSI, Max or messiah pipeline. and only sometimes.
( with who i talk to, alot messiah users are now using XSI or Maya or render there output )
I’m sure you will find a one or 2 reference that break that rule, but that shows my point the industry is HUGE and LW is only a Very VERY small part of it nowadays,.
check the Autodesk and Avid sites the production stories are piled high and lots of hero shots and details that really show those packages do the WOW bits in the movies
8 or more years ago LW was everywhere and credited for most things that looked cool.
but it’s not like that nowadays purely because the software has not been developed the way it’s users wanted… 