The Best Performing Movies Shot in Texas; just the numbers.

Plenty of movies have a Texas scene. Far fewer were actually made here, and the difference matters if your job is putting a picture on the ground in this state. So we built a list with a hard rule and we are working through all of it.

Shot in Texas: the 50 is a countdown of the fifty highest grossing features for which more than half of principal photography happened in Texas, on the record. One film per post, one post a week, every Thursday, from number 50 down to number 1. The last one lands on August 19, 2027.

To qualify...

More than half of principal photography in Texas. That is the whole test. A film qualifies when the published record supports at least half, and it sits on the bench when the record cannot say.

This is stricter than it sounds, and it is why some titles you would expect are missing. Transformers: Age of Extinction grossed $1.1 billion and spent about three weeks here out of five months. Apollo 13 did its weightless work on KC-135 flights and not much else. JFK was roughly 40 percent Dallas. No Country for Old Men, which everyone files under Texas, shot nine days in the state.

Giant is the painful one. It is the most Texan movie ever made, Marfa has dined out on it for seventy years, and it does not pass. Forty-four days in Marfa out of a five month schedule, with the rest on Warner stages in Burbank. It is on the bench, and if enough people argue, it comes off the bench.

The full bench, with the reason each one is on it: Transformers: Age of Extinction, three Texas weeks of five months. Apollo 13, the KC-135 flights only. JFK, about 40 percent Dallas. No Country for Old Men, nine Texas days. Michael, 30 to 40 percent Texas with the rest in Chicago. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, interiors on the Universal lot. Tin Cup, an Arizona and Kingwood split nobody has quantified. Semi-Tough, same problem between Los Angeles and Dallas. Silkwood, which leans Texas but has never been counted. Reality Bites, ten days of forty-two. Giant. Logan’s Run, three Texas weeks and then nine stages at MGM.

If we expand the list, the next ones in line are Boys Don’t Cry, 8 Seconds, Rushmore, Office Space and Dazed and Confused. Arguments are welcome and the ledger is public. We may have to include all of these anyway as I love them all so much.

The ranking, and where the numbers come from.

Worldwide lifetime gross, unadjusted, from Box Office Mojo. The Numbers fills in where Box Office Mojo has no usable figure, which happens on Bonnie and Clyde and The Getaway. A handful of older titles are domestic only on both sources, and those posts will make note.

Unadjusted is a defensible choice and it is not the only one. Adjusted for inflation this list would look completely different and Giant’s absence would hurt more. We are using the number both sources actually publish, naming the source in the sentence every time, and flagging every title where the two disagree by more than rounding. Six of the fifty do.

One pattern shows up immediately and is worth saying once rather than fifty times: Robert Rodriguez directed or co-directed eleven of these fifty. Nobody else is close. Whatever else Troublemaker Studios has been, it has been the most reliable engine of Texas feature production for a quarter century.

What each post actually gives you.

Not a review. Every entry runs the same way: where it shot, town by town, with the addresses where they are on the public record. Who made it. What it cost and what it took. What the Texas Film Commission’s filmography says about the dates. Why people love it. Then one section on what that film’s use of Texas would mean for a producer trying the same thing today, because that is the part nobody else writes.

Some of these shoots are instructive because they went well. Some are instructive because they did not. All of them are in the public record, which is where every figure in this series comes from.

The first five are live.

#50 Man of the House (2005). The UT campus during a live football Saturday, and the access that made it possible.

#49 Dr. T & the Women (2000). Robert Altman shot nine of ten weeks in Dallas and used the city as a character.

#48 Leap of Faith (1992). Plainview played Rustwater, Kansas, and kept the fake name on its water tower for 24 years.

#47 Grindhouse (2007). Two features through one Austin studio in five months, and the one sequence that had to leave.

#46 The Alamo (2004). Fifty-one acres and seventy structures near Dripping Springs, and a release that went wrong after the work was done.

All fifty, in publication order.

Counting down. Town listed is the primary base, not the only location.

#50 Man of the House (2005) · Austin

#49 Dr. T & the Women (2000) · Dallas

#48 Leap of Faith (1992) · Plainview

#47 Grindhouse (2007) · Austin

#46 The Alamo (2004) · Dripping Springs

#45 Necessary Roughness (1991) · Denton

#44 Shorts (2009) · Austin

#43 The Last Picture Show (1971) · Archer City

#42 Blank Check (1994) · Austin

#41 The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) · Round Rock

#40 Places in the Heart (1984) · Waxahachie

#39 Selena (1997) · Corpus Christi

#38 The Getaway (1972) · San Marcos

#37 The Life of David Gale (2003) · Austin

#36 Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014) · Austin

#35 Benji (1974) · McKinney

#34 The Faculty (1998) · Austin

#33 The Ringer (2005) · Austin

#32 Where the Heart Is (2000) · Austin

#31 Machete (2010) · Austin

#30 RoboCop 2 (1990) · Houston

#29 Urban Cowboy (1980) · Pasadena

#28 Boyhood (2014) · Austin

#27 Secondhand Lions (2003) · Austin

#26 Bonnie and Clyde (1967) · Pilot Point

#25 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006) · Austin

#24 RoboCop (1987) · Dallas

#23 Varsity Blues (1999) · Coppell

#22 The Tree of Life (2011) · Smithville

#21 Friday Night Lights (2004) · Odessa

#20 The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl (2005) · Austin

#19 Problem Child (1990) · Dallas

#18 There Will Be Blood (2007) · Marfa

#17 The Rookie (2002) · Big Lake

#16 Hope Floats (1998) · Smithville

#15 Spy Kids: All the Time in the World (2011) · Austin

#14 Friday the 13th (2009) · Austin

#13 Courage Under Fire (1996) · El Paso

#12 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) · Austin

#11 Terms of Endearment (1983) · Houston

#10 Spy Kids 2 (2002) · Austin

#9 Predators (2010) · Austin

#8 A Perfect World (1993) · Austin

#7 Spy Kids (2001) · Austin

#6 Sin City (2005) · Austin

#5 Born on the Fourth of July (1989) · Dallas

#4 Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003) · Austin

#3 Miss Congeniality (2000) · Austin

#2 True Grit (2010) · Austin

#1 Alita: Battle Angel (2019) · Austin

Why we are doing this.

Because the question we get asked most often is some version of “can you actually shoot that here,” and fifty worked examples answer it better than an argument does. A producer deciding between Texas and somewhere else is not moved by a brochure. They are moved by finding out that somebody already did the hard version of their problem, in this state, and what it took.

The series also keeps an honest ledger. Where a film left the state for part of its schedule, the post says so. Where the sources disagree on a gross, the post says so. Where Texas was the wrong answer for a sequence, the post says that too.

If you are looking at Texas for something now, the current ground conditions are covered in the plain English guide to the incentive and in what Texas doubles for. Every interpretive question about the state program belongs with the Texas Film Commission at 512-463-9200. Then call us about the production ones.

New entry every Thursday. Next up is number 38.