Setting the scene
For the next 10 years, the bills would set aside $500 million every two years for a new Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Fund. Under the legislation, film productions that spend at least $500,000 within the state would be eligible for grants.
Texas’ 2024-25 budget includes $200 million for film incentives, up from $45 million in the previous biennium. Actors, filmmakers and other proponents of the plan have said expanding how much Texas spends on film incentives will help production companies tell Texas stories in the Lone Star State and benefit people who live here.
“One of the only regrets of my 33-year career in film and television is not making more of my films here in Texas, especially the ones that were about Texas or the ones that were set in Texas,” Uvalde-born actor Matthew McConaughey told the House Culture, Recreation and Tourism Committee during an April 23 hearing.
McConaughey said the proposed bills, Senate Bill 22 and House Bill 4568, would help Texas compete with incentive programs in other states and put Texas “at the front of the bargaining table.”
“It's going to immediately create more jobs, and we're going to put a lot more Texas residents to work. Texans who've had to leave the state for work are now going to return, because the work will be here,” he said April 23.
State senators passed SB 22 with bipartisan support on April 16. The House bill was left pending in committee after the April 23 hearing, although it could be sent to the House floor during a future meeting.
Zooming in
Texans Chase Musslewhite and Grant Wood each attended film school at the University of Texas at Austin. Wood said they found jobs in other states because “these opportunities purely do not exist here in Texas.”
Musslewhite and Wood co-founded Media for Texas, an Austin-based company that advocates at the capitol for expanded film incentives.
“We really want to incentivize Texans who want to be in Texas to be able to make their movies in Texas, and this program would allow us to do that,” Musslewhite told Community Impact in an April 25 interview.
“If a film production comes to town, ... they will [spend], at times, millions of dollars in just a few days,” Wood told Community Impact. “They will stay at your hotel, they will eat at your restaurants. They will hire your local law enforcement, your medics, carpenters, electricians. All this money being incentivized by the state is then being poured into local communities.”
For every dollar of grant funding, TMIIIP grantees have spent $4.69 in Texas, according to Adriana Cruz, executive director of the Texas Economic Development and Tourism office. Since 2007, projects have injected $2.52 billion into the state economy and created over 189,000 jobs, Community Impact reported.
“If Texas were our own country, we would be the eighth-largest economy in the world, and we also rank as the nation's top exporting state,” Cruz told the House committee on April 23. “The moving image industry allows us to export perhaps our most important commodity, our Texan culture, our Texas stories and our Texas communities.”
More context
During a March 31 hearing on SB 22, Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, said he was concerned that some productions eligible for the grants would feature inappropriate topics or offensive language. He cited profanity in “Landman,” a North Texas-based production created by Taylor Sheridan, a Fort Worth native.
“We’ve got to have a standard that sets the tone for the state of Texas and what we’re going to support, what we’re not going to support. ... It’s not something I want to see on television and I certainly don’t want to put our money behind it,” Bettencourt said March 31.
The proposal approved by the Senate on April 16 would provide an additional 2.5% incentive for certain productions filmed in rural communities, faith-based productions and projects that promote “family values” and “portray Texas and Texans in a positive fashion.”
During the April 23 hearing, Rep. Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi, who authored the House bill, addressed concerns that an expanded film incentive program would be “a handout to Hollywood.”
“The talk that I keep hearing is ‘don’t Hollywood my Texas.’ ... This is ‘Texas my Texas,’” Hunter told the committee. “This is a Texas program. When we talk about a film credit, it goes for money spent in Texas and Texas residents who are hiring. No money goes to Hollywood.”
McConaughey added that all grant funds under the existing and proposed programs would be spent on work completed in Texas, such as production and filming.
“When a movie is done, there's a long editing process. ... You add music, you add score. That's post-production,” McConaughey said April 23. “If that's not done in Texas, that spin doesn't get a penny of the incentives.”
McConaughey and Midland native Woody Harrelson are currently filming an upcoming comedy series called “Brothers” in Dripping Springs, a city southwest of Austin. McConaughey said both actors took about a 15% pay cut to avoid moving the production to Georgia, which offers a 20% film tax credit.
McConaughey and Harrelson estimated about 90% of the crew working on “Brothers” are Texas residents.
“It's been said a few times, ‘Oh, just a bunch of Hollywood folks coming to our state.’ Woody and I invite you to come to our set anytime,” McConaughey said. “You're going to see a lot of Texans working in Texas, all over and across the set.”
