Ask someone outside Texas where movies get made in the state and they'll say Austin. They're behind. The center of gravity for big-budget production in Texas has shifted north and west, to Fort Worth, and the building that proves it is a 450,000-square-foot studio campus sitting inside a 27,000-acre logistics development called AllianceTexas.
The Studio That Changed the Math
SGS Studios — Taylor Sheridan's production company — launched the campus in partnership with Hillwood (the Perot company that developed AllianceTexas) and Paramount Television. At 450,000 square feet across two buildings (SGS 1 and SGS 2), it's billed as the largest operating studio facility in Texas, purpose-built to run up to four large-scale productions simultaneously.
This isn't a converted warehouse with a few lights. The campus combines climate-controlled sound stages, mill space, wardrobe, and green-screen capability into one operational footprint. Filming there began in 2025, led by Paramount and 101 Studios on the second season of Landman, and the buildings have stayed busy since.
Why Fort Worth, and Why Now
Three forces converged:
- An anchor tenant with an endless slate. Sheridan's television empire — Landman, Lioness, The Madison, Dutton Ranch, Frisco King — provides the steady demand that justifies the infrastructure. Stages don't get built on hope; they get built on a confirmed pipeline.
- SB 22 money. The state's $1.5 billion incentive commitment, effective September 2025, made the financial case for keeping production in Texas instead of trucking it to Georgia or New Mexico.
- Real estate and logistics. AllianceTexas was already one of the largest master-planned developments in the country. Adding a studio campus to existing infrastructure — power, roads, an airport — is a fraction of the cost of starting from raw land.
The Economic Footprint
The numbers Fort Worth cites are not small. The city has reported more than $700 million in film and television economic impact since 2015, and the SGS campus accelerates that curve. Larger tiered productions typically spend around $100,000 per shooting day locally — location fees, crew wages, vendor contracts, hotel nights, catering. Multiply that across four concurrent stages and a year-round calendar.
And there's more coming. The stated plan is to add additional campuses across AllianceTexas, each with its own sound stages, post-production suites, and vendor support — an attempt to build not just a studio but an ecosystem capable of holding long-term tenants beyond Sheridan's own productions.
What This Means If You Work in Texas Film
For crew, the message is simple: the work is in North Texas. If you're an Austin-based grip or an aspiring camera assistant, the busiest stages in the state are now a few hours up I-35. For producers, Fort Worth offers something Texas has never reliably had — turnkey stage capacity at scale, next to the incentive and the crew base.
For everyone else, it's worth sitting with the strangeness of it: the largest film studio in Texas was built next to an inland logistics port, anchored by one man's television habit, and it works. Austin still has the festivals and the indie soul. Fort Worth has the stages and the call sheets.
SGS Studios: sgs-studios.com
Fort Worth Film Commission: fortworth.com/film