From ‘Yellowstone’ to ‘The Chosen,’ boom times for small Texas towns

Venus doesn’t get a whole lot of visitors – just the occasional bank robber and Hollywood movie star.

The bank that Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow robbed a century ago is in this small town south of Fort Worth, and so, Venus residents insist, are the bullet holes. Faye Dunaway, Warren Beatty, and Tom Cruise have passed through, but that heist might have been the most exciting day in the town’s otherwise sleepy history.

That is until “Yellowstone” filmed here last November, flooding downtown with cast, crew, and hundreds of fans of the hit television show. The town is still talking about it – and feeling the bump in tourism.

If the newly booming Texas film industry has a heart, it might be Fort Worth.

Eight years ago, tired of watching productions go to Dallas, the city created its own film commission. Since then, it’s driven $555 million in economic impact and supported over 18,000 jobs, according to Jessica Christopherson, the head of the commission.

“The requests and interest in filming, people coming to scout, has just increased year over year,” she says. “I’ve seen it grow from reality shows to independent films, to now [major] films and television series.” 

From Weatherford to Waxahachie, the past few years have seen a surge in film and television production in the Fort Worth area. A steady stream of films and music videos have been shot in and around the city. “The Chosen,” a crowd-funded television series dramatizing the life of Jesus Christ, has set up permanently in Midlothian. Production companies have been planting roots, and sound stages have opened.

But when you think about the Fort Worth scene right now, there is one dominant force: Taylor Sheridan.

Prominent and prolific, the Fort Worth-raised actor, writer, and producer has three shows airing, two shows filming, and four shows in development – many of them filming in Texas, where he lives and, since 2021, owns the century-old 6666 Ranch.

The “Sheridan-verse” has sprawled to include “1883” and “1923,” both prequel series to “Yellowstone.” A forthcoming series about Bass Reeves, one of the first Black U.S. deputy marshals west of the Mississippi River, has been filming in the area this year.

“The people who have really helped make Texas a provocative option are the artists,” says Tom Nunan, a continuing lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Theater, Film and Television, and a former network and studio president. 

In the past that has included Austin auteurs like Richard Linklater and Terrence Malick. Today, Fort Worth is building its own local talent base. Channing Godfrey Peoples (“Miss Juneteenth”) and Augustine Frizzell (“Never Goin’ Back”) are two young filmmakers who launched their careers with low-budget coming-of-age movies set – and filmed – in Fort Worth.

Indeed, beyond the economic activity, the increased production is helping show a Texas beyond the traditional stereotypes, says Kim Owczarski, an associate professor at Texas Christian University who is studying the Fort Worth film industry.

“As important as [Mr. Sheridan] has been in bringing attention, there is a lot more going on,” she adds.

“The past has always been a fascination with Texas, the myths,” she continues. But “we [haven’t] seen a lot of what it’s like in modern times to be Texan. ... We’re a much more diverse state than we see represented.”

“It just comes down to money”

Texas was long a popular filming location, not least for Westerns, says Mindy Raymond, communications director for the Texas Media Production Alliance (TXMPA), a lobby group. 

But since incentive programs came into the picture in the 1990s and 2000s, studios have looked to other states, even for films set in Texas. “Dallas Buyers Club,” an Oscar winner in 2014, filmed mostly in Louisiana. “Hell or High Water,” a 2016 Sheridan-scribed film about two brothers robbing banks in West Texas, was filmed mostly in New Mexico, as was “Vengeance,” a West Texas-set dark comedy released last year.

New Mexico offers a base tax credit of 25%, plus a refundable tax credit with a yearly cap on incentives of $110 million. Oklahoma is offering up to a 38% tax rebate – higher even than Georgia, a production powerhouse. And Louisiana offers a base credit of 25% and an annual cap of $150 million.

Texas, meanwhile, offers a maximum tax credit of 20%, and for 2021-23 allocated $45 million for production incentives.

“The state ran out of that allocation [after] about six months,” says Red Sanders, founder and president of Red Productions, a Fort Worth-based video and film production company.

After that, when studios came knocking, he adds, “we had to say, ‘Well, if you can wait until September 2023 when our budget gets re-upped, then there will be something here.’”

Incentive packages are now so important producers “will literally change the look and feel of the script to reflect the tax incentives that exist,” says Mr. Nunan, who also founded The Industry Way, a company aimed at helping creators break into Hollywood.

“There’s an openness from creatives in L.A. to work [in Texas],” he adds, “but the incentives have to be right. It just comes down to money.”

New stories, new hope

The state legislature is now debating what that budget should be, and the TXMPA is asking that it be increased to about $200 million for the next two years. But there may be some obstacles to those efforts. 

One is political. In a Republican-dominated state, supporting tax breaks for liberal Hollywood hasn’t been popular. The other is fiscal. Texas is already a very low-tax state (including no state income tax), which doesn’t give the state much budgetary wiggle room.

“There’s always been this discussion of handouts to Hollywood,” says Ms. Raymond. Meanwhile, “we have about a 5-to-1 return on investment,” she adds, and “a lot of our Texas stories are being told in other states, which is quite maddening.” 

Local and industry leaders think they have two new, compelling stories to tell lawmakers, however. One is the popularity of Mr. Sheridan’s shows. The other is the experiences of towns like Venus.

“It used to be the belief that production only happened in the metroplexes, and that really isn’t true anymore,” says Stephanie Whallon, director of the Texas Film Commission, in an email.

The “Yellowstone” crew spent four days in Venus, with the town ultimately featuring in five minutes of a recent episode. The square was packed all day, and local businesses say they are still feeling the “Yellowstone” bump.

“It was so much fun. It was great,” says Stacey Robar, a small-business owner and head of the Venus Chamber of Commerce.

“Something like that would definitely help get some of these places on the map,” she adds. “Venus has really struggled. ... A lot of these small towns that are barely surviving need it.”

Venus Market, a retail co-op space Ms. Robar co-owns and rents to about 30 vendors, opened on the square last July. They made two-thirds of their July sales in one day while the show filmed. The next month was their best sales month to date, she says. 

“We thought it would be just kind of be one and done,” she adds. “It’s still happening, to be honest.”

Ellis County Judge Todd Little feels the same way. The county courthouse in Waxahachie, 20 miles from Venus, just finished portraying a 19th-century Arkansas courthouse for “Bass Reeves.”

“It takes traffic to keep those [local] businesses alive. That’s what films will do for these towns,” he says. “It will be a great help to these small and historic communities.”

Then there are the intangible benefits, notes Jim Burgess, the mayor of Venus. He can remember watching “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Born on the Fourth of July” downtown and smile, even while dealing with infrastructure and other problems. 

An influx of camera crews and set designers and movie stars anywhere is, simply put, fun. And that’s not something he can put a price on.

“It brought some excitement to the town more than anything else,” he says. “It just kind of gives you a little spark.”