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The New Hollywood? Actors Launch Initiative To Incentivize TV, Film Production In Texas

Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson and other A-list Lone Star actors sent a direct message to the Texas Legislature on Wednesday: We will bring film and television productions and investment home to Texas if you offer us more incentives.

The actors, also including Dennis Quaid, Billy Bob Thornton and Renée Zellweger, launched the True to Texas initiative with a promo video in the style of True Detective on X. Harrelson implied that the legislature could use a small fraction of the state’s budget surplus, about $23.8B, to turn Texas into “the New Hollywood.” 

“So what do you say, Texas Legislature? You don’t like what Hollywood’s been dishing? Let’s take over the kitchen,” McConaughey said in the video. 

Productions will keep going to other states that offer better incentives than Texas, meaning it is missing out on the investment that would come with them, Zellweger said. The actors named Georgia, South Carolina, New Mexico and Oklahoma as examples. 

“She makes a good point,” Harrelson said. “Why should all these other states take advantage of these investments but not Texas?” 

The Texas Senate filed a budget last week including $498M to revamp the Texas Film Incentive, saying it would make “Texas the movie capital of the world.” The budget would put $48M toward grants for small films and television commercials and up to $450M in new tax credits, including Texas residency requirements for workers, a news release says.

Texas gets back $4 for every $1 invested while creating new jobs for Texans, according to the Senate release.

The Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program was created 17 years ago under then-Gov. Rick Perry, according to AP News. Television and movie productions filmed in Texas can receive a 5% to 20% rebate, depending on their minimum in-state spending, but only until the program runs out of money each budget cycle. 

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Quaid and other industry heavyweights, including Yellowstone writer and director Taylor Sheridan, have previously urged Texas lawmakers to invest more in the program. 

“One of my great frustrations was that I wrote Hell or High Water, and they filmed the darn thing in New Mexico,” Sheridan told the AP in October. “My love story to Texas was shot west of where it should have been shot.”

The last Texas Legislature in 2023 gave the program $200M over two years, a significant increase from the $45M biennial budget before that.

“Texas has pulled a boatload of money for film incentives last session, and this session, the sky’s the limit,” Thornton said in the video. 

The program requires 55% of paid crew and 55% of paid cast members to be Texas residents, and 60% of the total production must be completed in the state. 

Texas has much to offer those producing television and film projects, Quaid said.

“We’ve got deserts, oceans, we’ve got forests, we’ve got rolling hills. Is there anything we don’t have?” he said.

Quaid, McConaughey, Harrelson and Zellweger were all born in Texas. Thornton isn't a native Texan but is often mistaken for one

The film industry's forays in states outside California haven't all been smashing successes. Hollywood has scaled back productions filmed in Georgia, leaving new studio space built in Atlanta unused, with owners struggling to cover operating costs. 

Direct spending by studios in Georgia for film and TV productions fell by 37% over the past year, according to the state film office.