After 127 years, the Montana film industry is aging well.
So many Hollywood types have come to Montana over recent decades that some refer to Bozeman as Boze-Angeles.
The incursion is a familiar complaint from native Montanans and from those who pioneered the scenic-peace-and-quiet migration and forgot to shut the door behind them. But all is forgiven as long as those stars keep bringing film productions to the state.
If one Montana movie is lodged in most people’s memories, it’s the moving 1992 film “A River Runs Through It,” based on the book by Norman Maclean — part of an equally stellar tradition of writers who have graced Montana’s landscape for generations. But filming in the state goes back a whole lot further to 1897, when the Edison Manufacturing Company filmed a tourist train leaving Livingston.
Like the proverbial large employer whose CEO goes on a trip and decides to bring the company there too, the film industry has since evolved from tourist to longtime economic engine. While other states have only discovered the virtues of establishing a film office in recent years, the Montana Department of Commerce created a Film Office 50 years ago in 1974.
In 2019, the Montana State Legislature passed the Montana Economic Development Industry Advancement Act (MEDIA Act) to offer an income tax benefit to entice film, television and other media production. From July 2020 through June 2022, the state welcomed 195 productions resulting in $153.9 million in local economic impact, 840 full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs and $16.6 million in tax revenue. From July 2022 through mid-May 2024, the state saw 167 more productions resulting in $312.2 million in economic impact, 1,320 FTEs and tax revenue of $22.2 million.
In June, the Department of Commerce announced that, after receiving 150 applications requesting more than $9 million in funds from its Big Sky Film Grant (BSFG) program, 67 film creations will share more than $2.6 million in grants to film on location across the state.
“These 67 film projects are expected to spend an estimated $35 million in Montana,” said Paul Green, director of the Montana Department of Commerce, “and will bring in productions that will help boost the economies of many rural Montana communities, including Plentywood, Cohagen, Lame Deer, Poplar, Dillon, Clyde Park, Choteau, Pryor, Roberts, Virginia City and Pray.”
The largest grant of $175,000 is going to “The Unholy Trinity,” a western set in the 1870s featuring Pierce Brosnan and Samuel L. Jackson. It’s directed by Richard Gray, whose filmography includes other Montana-located films such as “Robert the Bruce” and “Murder in Yellowstone City.”
Like others before him, Australian native Gray was enamored enough with the state to move his family in 2019 to Livingston — the same town where film in Montana got its start 122 years earlier. There, he and co-founders Carter Boehm and Colin Davis have founded Yellowstone Film Ranch, which they describe as a “one-stop shop Montana filming location with industry-leading tax credit services, an operational western town backlot, vast prairie and forested land available, medieval sets and a spacious production office available for rent.”
The train filmed by Edison himself left Livingston in 1897. But like a steam locomotive rolling down the track, the industry’s back in town with more momentum than ever.
