AUSTIN — Embracing a top legislative priority for Fort Worth, the Texas Legislature on Saturday authorized an unprecedented 10-year infusion of hundreds of millions in state film incentives.
Proponents say the effort will cement Texas' stature as one of the nation's dominant production centers in the film and TV industry.
The Texas House voted 112-26 to send a Senate-passed bill to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who is expected to sign it.
"Texas is going to see a boom in film economic development," said Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, the bill's House sponsor who predicted that Texas filmmaking is poised to triple in size and would further boost the stature of Fort Worth, which he described as "one of the leaders of filmmaking."
Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker, Fort Worth-based star producer Taylor Sheridan and Texas actors Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson and Dennis Quaid were part of the high-powered offensive that campaigned to propel Texas past states such as Georgia and New Mexico in attracting out-of-state production investment.
Fort Worth, which recently surpassed Austin as the state's fourth-largest city with more than a million residents, would be a major beneficiary of the legislation. The package will further expand a burgeoning film and entertainment industry that began taking root well over a decade ago, resulting in an economic impact of more than $700 million and 30,000 local jobs, according to the Fort Worth Film Commission.
Creator of "Yellowstone," "Landman" and "Lioness," Taylor Sheridan testified before a Texas Senate committee in support of the state's film incentive program Oct. 9. (Courtesy photo | Texas Senate livestream) Production companies could use incentive payments to pay for workers in Texas, meals purchased from local restaurants and airfare on Texas-based airlines.
All but two of the 11 Tarrant County House members voted for Senate Bill 22. Republican Reps. Tony Tinderholt of Arlington and David Lowe of North Richland Hills voted against it.
"We're traditionally against those," Tinderholt said. "I know how important it is to some people, some elected officials, but I just have to vote for my district."
Lowe said he has consistently given his word "that I would oppose Hollywood handouts, and I kept it."
"It's not the proper role of government," the freshman lawmaker added.
In 2023, Parker and then-state Rep. Craig Goldman — now a congressman representing Fort Worth — helped secure the state's current $200 million appropriation for the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program. The appropriation was previously set at $45 million over two years.
The latest package had the backing of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate's presiding officer. Under the original version by Sen. Joan Huffman, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, the incentives would be funded by sales tax revenue from outside the treasury at a rate of up to $500 million every two years through 2032, potentially totaling $2.5 billion.
Just before the final vote, however, Hunter amended the upcoming biennial appropriation to $300 million, explaining later that he was asked to do so at the request of budget-writers to keep the level with current spending restraints. He said he will continue to advocate for the higher biennial amount in upcoming budget cycles and is hopeful that the ultimate package will still be in the $2.5 billion range. Hunter committed to "fighting for more each time."
Beyond the specific amounts, lawmakers and industry experts said the overriding intent is the guarantee of continued funding to signal Texas' long-term commitment to draw out-of-state moviemakers.
Red Sanders is the owner of Red Productions, a video and film production company in Fort Worth. He's also the founding member of the Fort Worth Film Commission (Cristian ArguetaSoto | Fort Worth Report) "I think what we're most excited about is seeing a 10-year funding trust created," said Fort Worth producer Red Sanders, a founding member of the Fort Worth Film Commission and board member of the Texas Media Production Alliance, the industry's main statewide advocacy group. He said the legislation signals to outside industry "that Texas is serious because we'll have the funding there in place for 10 years."
"It won't be something that people have to wonder, when they are ready to bring a project here, will there be funding based on whether the budget vote went through that year or not?" said Sanders, the owner of Fort Worth-based video and film production company Red Productions. "When it was up to the whims of the two-year budget cycle, no one wanted to make significant brick-and-mortar investments."
Huffman and others also underscored the point, saying the decade-long funding commitment and expanded largesse send a convincing message that Texas is unquestionably committed to sustained filmmaking.
"We heard testimony over the interim (period between sessions) that producers who want to film in Texas often have difficulty convincing the capital management side of film production companies to allow filming here when presented with more robust and consistent incentives being offered in other states," Huffman said during a committee hearing.
Paul Jensen, a producer with Lucky Number Eight Productions in Houston, called the restructured program an "absolute game changer" that will remove uncertainty surrounding the current biennial funding structure.
"It's hard to make an investment in a program that you're not sure is going to be around two years later," he told the Fort Worth Report. "This is the first time they've built a long-term stable program which encourages major infrastructure investment. This will likely result in building studios in communities all across Texas."
The incentives, awarded in the form of grants and reimbursements for movies as well as television, commercials, animation and video games, has drawn production crews to cities both large and small throughout Texas.
"Landman" creator Taylor Sheridan directs season one, episode two of the Paramount+ show "Landman." Sheridan continues to bring other productions to film in Fort Worth, such as "The Madison." (Courtesy photo | Emerson Miller/Paramount+) Economic benefits for host communities range from dollars spent by crew members for coffee, drinks and meals to lodging, car rentals and more permanent expenditures such as sound stages and outlay for technical equipment. Sheridan's Fort Worth-based 101 Studios has booked over 75,000 hotel room nights in Fort Worth through productions that included four TV series that each had a daily budget of $1.5 million, according to the Fort Worth Film Commission, including "The Madison," "Lioness," "Landman," "Bass Reeves" and "1883."
"A week does not go by before I'm met by a business owner in Fort Worth, whether it's a restauranteur, a dry cleaner, a construction industry, to say 'thank you' for what's happening in Fort Worth around film and television," Parker told lawmakers recently.
Sheridan, a Fort Worth resident whose Texas roots go back to the 1840s, calls the incentives "extremely important" to helping offset the immense costs of movie-making, which in turn plow dollars back into the local economy. One show spent $44.4 million in the Fort Worth area over 74 days and hired more than 1,100 Texas-based crew and more than 800 Texas cast members, according to the mayor's office.
Sheridan's success through 101 Studios is widely credited for helping spark the Fort Worth region's explosive growth in film, TV and other aspects of the entertainment industry.
"It's pretty wild to see," Sanders said. "Twenty years ago, when I started the business, there were probably three production companies in town. I think there's probably 30 now."
Developer Ross Perot Jr. has teamed with Sheridan in establishing a sound stage in the Alliance Corridor. Fort Worth has the largest cinematic volume stage in Texas at Trilogy Studios, according to the Texas Film Commission, and is the home base for Dr. Phil's cable network, Main Street Media. A first-of-its-kind Virtual Production Institute will be based in Fort Worth at the city's developing Texas A&M campus.
Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris in season 1, episode 4 of Landman streaming on Paramount+. (Courtesy photo | Emerson Miller, Paramount+) Chad Gunderson, an owner of Fort Worth-based Out of Order Studios, has also made a similar impact in the region with "The Chosen," a successful multi-season series about the life of Jesus.
Filmed at a Salvation Army camp in Midlothian, the series started as what Gunderson says was a "very, very small" project that originally didn't qualify for incentives and spent less than $1 million per episode during the first season.
"This coming season we'll be spending almost $70 (million) on the season," he told senators. "And of the entire series, we've spent probably $150 million on the show, and more than half of that has been spent in the state of Texas."
Gunderson and Sheridan were among several film and industry experts that testified before Huffman's panel in support of dramatically boosting incentives to push Texas to the national forefront. Texas-born actors McConaughey, Harrelson, Quaid, Renée Zellweger and Arkansas native Billy Bob Thornton, who often plays Texans, have also starred in a commercial called "True to Texas" to pitch increased film and TV incentives.
McConaughey, an Austin resident and faculty member at the University of Texas of Austin, urged policymakers to "lean into" the incentive program to help build a permanent infrastructure of studios, sound stages, skilled professionals and training programs that would give Texas unparalleled supremacy over competing states.
"We do this and there will be a point where we are not going to need financial incentives from the state, because the infrastructure will be in place," said the Uvalde-born McConaughey, "and that will be a major, major game-changer."
The Fort Worth Report's Texas legislative coverage is supported by Kelly Hart. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
Dave Montgomery is an Austin-based freelance reporter for the Fort Worth Report.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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