How to Kill the Texas Film Industry

AMC recently premiered ten episodes of The Son, a series based on the celebrated novel spanning generations of Texans written by Austin novelist Philipp Meyer. Reviews highlighted that it was filmed on location here in Texas, with the landscape giving the series an epic heft. And if our legislature eliminates the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program - which there is serious talk of doing - a second season of this Texas story will probably be filmed in New Mexico. Four years ago, the legislature put $95 million into the incentive program for 2014-15 and $442 million was then spent on production during those two years. During the next session, the incentives for 2016-17 were cut by two-thirds, to $32 million, and production for those two years was estimated to be just above $120 million, a drop of more than $300 million. If the initial budgets this session stand - with the Senate appropriating just $3.5 million and the House nothing - it stands to reason that virtually no productions will come to Texas in 2018-19. This is called killing the Texas film industry.