Spotlight: Robert Rodriguez made his first feature for $7,000 and built a studio in Austin.
In 2019, Texas Monthly called Alita: Battle Angel the most expensive film ever shot in Texas. Robert Rodriguez directed it, and it was made in Austin. The production built a 62,000-square-foot set about fifteen minutes from downtown, and more than 350 people worked in the art department alone. The same story notes that the shoot leaned on local camera grips and construction crews, local businesses for meals and supplies, and a local demolition company to haul away the set.
That is one film. The bigger story is the three decades of work that made a shoot that size possible in Austin at all.
A $7,000 start and a decision to stay
Rodriguez was born in San Antonio, according to the Texas Cultural Trust. He came to the University of Texas at Austin, where he drew a comic strip called Los Hooligans for The Daily Texan, as The Alcalde recounts.
He paid for his first feature by checking into a medical research study in Austin. A 1993 Time report put the total budget of El Mariachi at about $7,000, shot in 14 days, with Rodriguez serving as the entire crew. The Texas Cultural Trust notes that he wrote, directed, photographed, edited and recorded sound on the film.
The industry came calling. He kept his base in Texas.
Building Troublemaker Studios
The Austin Chronicle describes how Rodriguez and Elizabeth Avellán built Troublemaker Studios from scratch on the site of the old Robert Mueller Municipal Airport. Avellán told the paper, “Our dream had always been to make movies here in Austin.”
The Chronicle reports that Troublemaker’s green-screen stage is where Sin City, much of Planet Terror and his family films were shot. Troublemaker’s own site names Spy Kids and Sin City as franchises that came to life there.
Spy Kids is a Texas story from the start. Rodriguez told The Daily Texan that he conceived it in San Antonio from his Los Hooligans characters and that the film “represents Texas to me, anything you can dream up.” He wanted it made at home, like “a home-cooked meal.”
The studio has also pulled work to Texas that was planned elsewhere. In 2020, the Austin Chronicle reported that Hypnotic, set to film in Los Angeles, moved to Troublemaker in East Austin after Rodriguez proposed it. “I knew at some point they would look at the budgets and know that Austin would be more natural,” he said. On his local crews: “our crews are so versed in new technology, and from the very beginning they’ve been cutting edge and experimental.”
Teaching people to do it themselves
Rodriguez has spent as much energy showing others how to make films as making his own. His book Rebel Without a Crew, published by Plume, is described by Penguin Random House as “part production diary, part how-to manual.” It closes with an appendix called “The Ten Minute Film Course,” a guide to teaching yourself production, directing and screenwriting. The Austin Chronicle also points readers to his Ten Minute Film School videos as a source of filmmaking lessons.
The Austin Chronicle reports that Rebel Without a Crew, a series on his El Rey network, gave five filmmakers $7,000 each to make their own features while a documentary crew followed Rodriguez making his. “Seeing is believing,” he said.
He keeps showing up for students. UT’s Moody College reported in 2013 that he spoke to Radio-Television-Film students at SXSW and said he stays connected to the college to inspire “the next generation of innovators.” The Alcalde reports that he often asks to speak to classes when he visits campus.
Honors from home
Texas has said thank you more than once. The Austin Film Society lists him as a 2005 Rising Star honoree at the Texas Film Awards and as accepting the 2014 Star of Texas Award for From Dusk Till Dawn.
In March 2026, the Texas Film Awards gala was held at Troublemaker Studios. The Austin Chronicle reported that Spy Kids would receive the Star of Texas Award on its 25th anniversary for helping establish Austin as a production hub. The Daily Texan reports that the film was also inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame that night.
What comes next
Rodriguez’s newest venture keeps the do-it-yourself spirit and adds his audience. In 2025 he and Alexis Garcia launched Brass Knuckle Films. Fast Company billed their SXSW 2025 session as a look at how Rodriguez is bringing Hollywood to Texas, as part of a push to make the state “the film capital of the world.” TheWrap reported in March 2026 that the company is backed by more than 2,000 fan investors. Its “Best Idea Wins” contest put investor-writers in the room with professional screenwriters. Screen International reports that the company plans to make its films at Troublemaker in Austin where possible.
One of them is Incognito, an action film starring Jessica Alba and Michael Peña. Production List reported in June 2026 that Rodriguez would direct it in Austin, with Troublemaker among the producing companies. The site’s Austin listings now show Incognito in production in the city.
Thirty-plus years after a $7,000 film, Rodriguez is still making movies in Austin and still telling people they can do the same. For anyone building a production in Texas, his career is a useful map.
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