The production industry in Texas is about to possibly explode spectacularly, with big new studios planned, including a 72-acre development in Mansfield, a 560-acre production campus in Bastrop and an enormous production space in San Marcos that would reportedly sprawl over 75 acres, with a backlot of 1,500 acres.
Tony Armer is the head of production at South Side Studios near Downtown Dallas, where they have invested millions in renovations, “We are now the largest sound stages in North Texas.” Armer says they welcome new Texas studio developments, “Everybody works together because we recognize that growing the industry as a whole is a benefit for everybody.”
Armer gave us a tour of South Side Studios, including “the biggest warehouse for props in the entire state of Texas.” You name it; it’s in there. Clothes from every era, construction barricades, old televisions, a pay phone section, a one-armed mermaid, airport X-ray machines and (fake) cocaine bricks, medical organs and dead bodies. Armer estimates, “It’s 100,000 pieces easy.”
It’s all for use in 10,000 and 20,000-square-foot sound stages where they build entire villages inside. Outside, there are sets of a totally different sort, “Old train tracks. This could be anywhere in the world; it could be Mexico or Dallas…Prague…post-Soviet. You don’t want to clean this up. You want to leave it dirty and gritty. You want to shoot a zombie show; this is great for a zombie TV series.”
The lot also fulfills one of the most sought-after production space requests, which Armer reveals is “an abandoned warehouse”. Four stories’ worth. It was an old cotton distribution facility.
Will big new incentives bring big new productions?
Armer says there are plenty of options at South Side Studios, and that there is more and more interest these days in using those options. It used to be, “That when I reached out to people and said Dallas…what do you think about Dallas for filming? And they said we don’t.”
That changed several years ago when Texas lawmakers increased production incentives from $45 million to $200 million. Now they’re considering $498 million. Armer says that would send a huge message to productions that, “There is something happening in Texas. Texas is taking this industry seriously and we can come spend our money there”.
Armer has bold predictions if lawmakers approve that amount and increase the base rate of the rebate to 30% for productions that choose Texas, “I think Texas will become number two in the country behind the state of Georgia. I think we become number two, and we start to steal business from Georgia at that point as well.” He says decision makers on big productions, “Are paying attention. The industry is not that hard to predict. They go where the money is.”
A-list Texas actors recently put together a little encouragement reel to appeal to legislators to pass the more generous enticements. If Texas lawmakers do it and maintain it, some proponents believe they could go a long way toward turning Hollywood into “Y’allywood.”
And Armer believes the payoff could be huge, “This will become a multi-billion-dollar industry for the state.”
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