Dallas Filmmakers React To New Film Incentive From Texas Legislature

After months of deliberation, the Texas Legislature officially passed Senate Bill 22, designed to incentivize film production in Texas. The bill, which received bipartisan support, establishes the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Fund, allowing for $300 million in funds to be distributed every two years until 2035, totaling $1.5 billion to be pumped into the statewide film industry.

Famed Texas actors and former True Detective co-stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson championed the bill together, appearing in a "True To Texas" commercial in support of the bill and directly lobbying lawmakers. This week, the bill passed in the Texas House with a 114-26 vote.

Local filmmaker Josh David Jordan thought the decision would “never happen.”

“It’s been so barren that I’ve gotten used to just hustling and not thinking about any incentives,” Jordan says.

The Dallas-based filmmaker released This World Won't Break in 2019, a Texas-set drama. He’s currently in post-production on El Tonto Por Cristo, which follows a monk in a monastery on the Texas coast.

“Now that it’s passed, I’m curious to see how it gets handed out,” Jordan says. “I’m sure it’s big films, big money, and that indie film will be at the kids’ tables. Every dime matters in indie film, so I hope there are special grants and breaks for filmmakers like me who make every dollar stretch.”

Thaddeus D. Matula is an Emmy-winning director born and raised in Dallas. He relocated to Austin in the early 2000s as the city seemed to be turning into a budding film scene. At the time, Quentin Tarantino was fresh off shooting the majority of his 2007 feature, Death Proof, in the city, and a new wave of filmmakers were flooding in.

Our neighbors to the east and west complicated things, though. Just as Texas was primed to be at the forefront of a new third coast film scene, Louisiana and New Mexico offered significant tax credits for film productions within the state. With no similar plan in place for Texas, the business went elsewhere.

“All of the sudden, this industry that I was wanting to move to a hub for, it all just disappeared,” Matula says. “It felt like overnight you would go to the same bars and there were just less and less people that you knew from the film business.”

“There were still the creatives,” Matula continues. “That’s what’s always been true of Austin, but we could’ve had a real industry then.”

Matula's most recent directorial output, Into The Spotlight, is a documentary that follows a Dallas-based theatre troupe made up of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It premiered in 2023 at the Dallas International Film Festival and recently became available on demand.

As for the incentives, he notes his appreciation for support across the typically warring party lines. For Matula, his career's future, along with the future of filmmakers all over Texas, has never seemed brighter.

“The coolest thing is this incentive package,” Matula says. “It’s enough that it’s not all for Taylor Sheridan.”