{"id":460111,"date":"2026-10-08T12:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T12:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/460111\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T12:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T12:56:11","slug":"houston-first-launches-a-five-year-plan-to-turn-houston-into-texass-film-capital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/460111\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston First launches a five-year plan to turn Houston into Texas&#8217;s film capital"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Texas has made massive strides toward becoming a<a data-ylk=\"slk:premier state for film and TV production;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chron.com\/culture\/article\/federal-film-incentive-texas-22431534.php?utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=yahoo_syndication\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\"> premier state for film and TV production<\/a>. Now, Houston is preparing to become the Lone Star State&#8217;s prime film and media destination, with a plan to transform <a data-ylk=\"slk:the city&#039;s film industry.;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chron.com\/culture\/article\/uh-film-industry-program-21324652.php?utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=yahoo_syndication\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">the city&#8217;s film industry.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Houston First Corporation, <a data-ylk=\"slk:the city&#039;s destination management organization;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonchronicle.com\/business\/article\/houston-first-corporation-government-19369666.php\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">the city&#8217;s destination management organization<\/a>, has announced a five-year strategic plan to make the city a top production destination in Texas and across the South. The plan will grow the city&#8217;s film and media production sector by improving incentives, developing the local workforce, improving and increasing production infrastructure and investing in Houston&#8217;s creative economy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Developed by the Houston Film Commission in partnership with consulting firm KHM, the plan builds on Houston&#8217;s advantages. Those include diverse filming sites, <a data-ylk=\"slk:the city&#039;s diversity;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chron.com\/culture\/article\/bassam-tariq-your-mother-houston-22459384.php?utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=yahoo_syndication\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">the city&#8217;s diversity<\/a> and global connectivity, and major-market infrastructure, while enhancing production infrastructure and bolstering the local workforce.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;Houston has all the ingredients to become a much larger player in the film and media industry-extraordinary locations, a diverse population, talented professionals and the scale and infrastructure of a global city,&#8221; Michael Heckman, President and CEO of Houston First, said in a press release sent to Chron. &#8220;This strategic plan gives us a clear path forward to turn those assets into greater economic opportunity-creating jobs and attracting investment so that the film industry can thrive here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The strategic plan will begin by continuing to improve and build on Houston&#8217;s local film incentive, which officially launched last year. The Houston Feature Film Incentive Program offers 10 percent back to producers of qualifying projects on local spend. Houston First has allocated $400,000 annually for the incentive program, which is already one of the most competitive in Texas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Along with improving the city&#8217;s incentive offering, the five-year plan will also increase marketing and promotion for Houston&#8217;s film-ready locations and assets and streamline permitting and location access. Later objectives of the plan call for advancing infrastructure, like studio spaces that can accommodate larger and more frequent productions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">&#8220;Growing Houston&#8217;s film industry requires more than attracting individual productions-it requires building an ecosystem that can sustain production year after year,&#8221; Alfred Cervantes, Executive Director of the Houston Film Commission, said in a statement. &#8220;Our focus is on creating the conditions that make Houston an easy choice for producers while developing opportunities for Houstonians to build careers in this industry.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">More Culture<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\"><a data-ylk=\"slk:TV;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;link&quot;,&quot;yLinkElementType&quot;:&quot;article_link&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/www.chron.com\/culture\/article\/tilman-fertitta-casino-reality-show-22453425.php?utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=yahoo_syndication\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">TV<\/a><a data-ylk=\"slk:| New reality series adds &#039;Below Deck&#039; 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Now, Houston is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-460111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}