Hollywood A-listers and Texas senators met yesterday to discuss a massive new investment in film and TV production incentives that would break the current program out of its boom-and-bust financing – or, as Matthew McConaughey put it, create a system of “wood screws, not Velcro.”

The Oscar winner dropped by the Texas Senate Finance Committee on a rare day off from filming Brothers, his new sitcom with his old friend Woody Harrelson. As Zach Galifianakis once noted, somewhere there was a sack not being hackied, but they had equally important business: to provide invited testimony on Senate Bill 22, the biggest reform to film production incentives in Texas since the creation of the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program (TMIIIP) in 2006.

The celebrity cameos did the trick, as the committee unanimously voted the bill out after a four-hour hearing. It now heads to the full senate – but what will it actually do?

What lawmakers are proposing is a new and additional Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Fund (TMIIIF) that would more than triple the cash available to bring and keep production in Texas.

There is an existing incentive program called the Texas Moving Image Incentive Program (TMIIIP). This is a tax reimbursement program that, as noted by Adriana Cruz, executive director of the Economic Development and Tourism division within the Office of the Governor, has been a massive success, bringing $2.5 billion in incentivized production to Texas since its inception and creating thousands of jobs. Senate Finance Committee Chair Joan Huffman, R-Houston, added that production supported by TMIIIP has had “a significant economic impact” for Texas, with $4.69 spent in state for every $1 reimbursed. However, the downside is Texas had lost a lot of production, including Fear the Walking Dead and Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, because the TMIIIP kitty was empty.

The problem is that TMIIIP is part of the regular biennial budget, and its appropriation has ricocheted between zero and $95 million. That unreliability makes it very unappealing for producers, especially in TV, who want to be able to plan more than a year out.

Enter TMIIIF: created by SB22, authored by Huffman but emanating from the office of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and with the quiet support of Gov. Greg Abbott. In many ways, it’s similar to TMIIIP: a rebate on qualified in-state expenditures. However, the difference is that TMIIIF would not be dependent on the whims of legislators every two years. Instead, this would be a trust fund operating outside the state treasury, funded by an appropriation of $500 million every two years, and administered by the Texas Film Commission, which operates within the Governor’s Office.

This would be in addition to TMIIIP, which is expected to repeat its 2024-25 biennium funding of $200 million ($45 million in the regular budget, plus a repeat of an extraordinary boost of $155 million in the supplemental budget). Cruz said that adding TMIIIF to the funding equation “would place us in a top tier” when it comes to state incentives, finally making Texas competitive with better-funded programs in Georgia, Illinois, and Louisiana.

However, there are some significant differences between TMIIIP as it stands and TMIIIF. Not least of these would be a dramatic cut in a core requirement: namely, how many Texans would be employed. Originally, TMIIIP required 70% of cast and crew be Texas residents, but that was cut to 55% last session after much behind-the-scenes pressure from Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan. SB 22 would cut that to 35% for the 2026-7 biennium, which would rise by 5% every two years until hitting 50% in 2031. TMIIIP’s big selling point has always been about creating and retaining jobs in Texas, and while some within the industry argue that the numbers need to be lowered simply because there are not enough trained professionals to crew up a big influx of productions, others may blanch at the cuts.

“One of the only regrets of my 33-year career in film and television is not making more of my films here in Texas.” – Matthew McConaughey

So, in making the case for big money and big changes, a little star power never hurts. Just as Sheridan had appeared at an earlier Senate Finance committee hearing as the celebrity endorser of production incentives, McConaughey was on hand to sell the members on the benefits of the fund. He explained, “One of the only regrets of my 33-year career in film and television is not making more of my films here in Texas, especially the ones that were about Texans or set in Texas.” TMIIIF, he suggested, could change that.

Beyond the home field appeal of having him working in the Lone Star State, McConaughey made the commercial case for attracting production to Texas was that it meant jobs: not just cast and crew, but lumber yards, taco vendors, “even Woody’s barber,” he smiled, cracking up his otherwise stoic castmate.

The barrier to shooting locally was expense. After all, filming here costs, and McConaughey explained that he and Harrelson (who sat silently through the meeting) took a 15% pay cut to film Brothers in Texas, rather than relocating production to Florida.

While rallying the troops for this big ask, McConaughey still snuck in a potential argument to win over the “no incentives ever” crowd. Unless a future Senate votes to extend its 10-year lifespan, then TMIIIF would expire in 2035. If there was enough investment now then Texas could build enough production and post-production infrastructure and then Texas could get out of the incentives game – well, cute idea, but tell that to California. As McConaughey noted, Hollywood has been slipping as a production center. However, that in no small measure is because that state hasn’t provided meaningful incentives, and there’s a lot of pressure from actual Hollywood to turn that around, especially in the wake of the recent L.A. fires.

The discussion of Hollyweird allowed time for some airing of gripes, like Sen. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston, incorrectly claiming that 1997’s Selena was filmed in California and not Texas (which would probably be a huge surprise to the residents of shooting locations including Corpus Christi, Houston, Lake Jackson, Poteet, and San Antonio). Meanwhile, Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, unexpectedly railed against Sheridan when he castigated oil drama Landman, its depiction of the industry, and “Billy Bob Thornton f-bombing every two seconds.”

Questions of language raised the longstanding concerns that these incentives could be used to subsidize the culture wars became more than a vague threat. Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, probed Texas Film Commission Director Stephanie Whallon on whether projects could be rejected because of profanity and taking the lord’s name in vain. “We’re still in the Bible Belt,” Campbell warned while calling for family-friendly movies.

By that, she probably meant projects like The Chosen, the multi-part rehashing of the life of Jesus Christ. Eager to be part of the conversation and fresh off a successful weekend at the box office for the latest installment, The Chosen: The Last Supper Part 1, producer Chad Gunderson asked the committee, “What’s more Texan than cowboys and Jesus?”

So if that’s what counts as Texan, what’s not Texan? That’s when conversation turned to content clauses in SB 22. The existing TMIIIP language allows for projects to be rejected on the basis of content, and SB 22 echoes this with restrictions on material not in keeping with what Huffman called “general standards of decency.” She seemed more obsessed by its potential for shaping the culture than in economic impact, asking if projects had been denied TMIIIP funding due to their script.

If anything, SB 22 gives more money to what it calls Texas Heritage projects – a nebulous proposal that adds an extra 2.5% for shows that promote Texas and family values. Commenting on this section, McConaughey said, “You don’t want to incentivize films that throw rocks at Texas or Texans. Me neither.”

Huffman noted that the state already had legal clarification that such restrictions would be legal, as they wouldn’t stop people making movies likes, say, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Machete, or No Country for Old Men (you know, the good Texas films) – just that they shouldn’t expect any money from Texas. And if restrictions about Texas and language are part and parcel of SB 22, that raises questions about who exactly would be attracted to filming in Texas – especially as it becomes known as a place where progressives, women, and people who don’t want measles aren’t that welcome.