The Letter
0 members of the Texas film community have signed.
Dear Texas Senators and Members of Congress:
We are a Texas coalition of crew, actors, directors, producers, vendors, and film commissioners representing the thousands of professionals who power film and television production in our state. We write in support of a federal tax incentive for film and television production.
For nearly a century, the U.S. was the world’s top location for film and television production. Today, more than 40 countries offer national incentives and now host most global production. The U.S. share has fallen below 40% and is expected to drop below 30% by 2035. State programs, including the strong Texas incentive, help, but they cannot compete with national policies on their own. With more than half a trillion dollars in global production spending expected over the next decade, a federal incentive would bring much of that work back home, adding more than $250 billion to the U.S. economy and over 143,500 jobs annually.
Texas has a proud filmmaking history, from Giant, The Last Picture Show, and Friday Night Lights to No Country for Old Men, Boyhood, Landman, and One Battle After Another. Today the industry supports nearly 172,400 Texas jobs and $11.8 billion in wages. In 2024, productions paid $379.3 million to 5,608 Texas vendors and since 2019, film and TV companies have paid an average of $445.1 million to local Texas vendors.
That spending reaches Main Street: the lumberyard, the diner, the hardware store, the hotel, and the families who work here. The average film spends $22.8 million and the average series $50 million. Love & Death alone spent $61.5 million in Central Texas and hired more than 700 Texas crew and 1,200 Texas cast. America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders generated $875,000 in Dallas-area spending in just 28 days.
Nationally, the industry supports more than two million jobs, pays over $200 billion in wages, and includes 162,000 businesses across all 50 states, 93% of them small businesses. America invented this industry, and a federal incentive is how we keep it here.
We urge you to contact Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) and Ranking Member Richard Neal (D-MA) to recommend urgent passage of a federal incentive.
The world has seen Texas on screen for generations. With your support, those stories will keep being made here, by Texans.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
The undersigned members of the Texas film and television community