Shoot Your Shot
Fort Worth earns slot on list of top movie-making cities in the U.S.
A round of applause for Fort Worth, which has been recognized by MovieMaker Magazine as one of the “Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker” in 2025.
Fort Worth came in at No. 19, and was one of five cities from Texas on the list, along with Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and El Paso. So sorry, Dallas. Austin was the highest-ranking city in Texas at No. 8.
The list selected 25 big cities in the U.S. and Canada. Metrics in the report were gathered through "surveys, production spending, tax incentives, additional research and personal visits whenever possible," according to a press release.
The report eliminates the two obvious cities — New York and Los Angeles — which would have automatically taken the top two slots. Minus those two cities, the No. 1 city on the list was Albuquerque, New Mexico. Toronto took No. 2, and Atlanta was No. 3.
The report specifically credits the impact that Taylor Sheridan andYellowstone have had, as follows:
The aforementioned Taylor Sheridan is keeping a lot of industry people busy in the Fort Worth area with an empire of shows that includes the Paramount+ dramas Yellowstone, Lioness, and his new Landman, starring Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Hamm and Demi Moore. … With very little red tape around the filmmaking process, there’s a strong crew base in Fort Worth, and no permits are necessary for filming exterior B-roll as long as you don’t block the right-of-way. In fact, the only time you need a permit in Fort Worth is when you’re closing down a street or sidewalk — otherwise, you can just deal directly with the property owner. Fort Worth also offers a 127 by 24 foot Volume stage at Trilogy Studios — everything’s bigger in Texas.
Other factors that contributed to Fort Worth's high rating included:
- an incentive program from the Texas Moving Image Industry that gives a 22.5 percent cash rebate for qualifying productions
- Fort Worth's "You Stay We Pay Hotel Rebate" program which gives $5 back for each hotel room if you book 500 total nights
- local festivals such as the Lone Star Film Festival
The report posits the authors' belief that "people make a place," stating that "the best places to live and work as a moviemaker are places where you have lots of friends around who will help you make movies, in return for you helping them make their movies. Maybe that’s New York or L.A., which are magnets for brave, creative people. But you may be better off in a tiny town where you make things every weekend than in a big city where you know no almost no one, and struggle so much financially that you never work on your films."
