How Montana is Reclaiming its Spotlight in the Film Industry

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - Once a month, representatives from the Missoula Economic Partnership come into the KGVO studio for what we call ‘Missoula ECON-101’, and on Tuesday, the special guests were MEP’s Deputy Director Nicole Rush and Montana filmmaker Lynn-Wood Fields.

Fields was asked about some of the major movies actually filmed here in Montana.

Missoula ECON 101 Featured the Montana Film Making Industry

“Far and Away,” began Fields. “‘Always’ was filmed here. ‘The River Wild’; all sorts of amazing films, of course, ‘A River Runs Through It’, and then in the 90s, it all went away. And do you have any idea why it went away? Canada figured out, if we incentivize productions, they would come and shoot in Canada, even if it was a Montana story. I discovered that later in life, when I went to film school and became active in making sure that Montana could get film and storytelling back into Montana.”

Fields said Montana has established itself as a place where local residents can prosper in the movie business.

Over 1,300 Film Makers Have Been Trained in Montana

“Now we've become very legitimate, and in five years, we have trained 1,300 filmmakers to work in our state,” she said. “I'm one of them. This is how I raise my family. I think there's a real idea that there aren't ‘local Montanans’ making films, but that is far from the truth. On top of that, when that passed, I noticed that we needed to get more people trained, so we created a media training center to get more people on film sets.”

Fields said she wrote legislation in a recent Montana session to incentivize filmmaking in the state.

“First of all, I helped write the incentive bill, so I just want to be clear about how it works. They do not get any money if they buy anything from out of state. You have to actually purchase stuff in Montana and hire crew in Montana. 25 percent for Montana vendors and Montana crew. We wrote that on purpose so that it would actually benefit and have economic impact in the state if they buy equipment or do any of that, it does not count back to the incentive. The other thing the way the incentive works is they do not get the money unless they spend the money.”

More States Are Now Competing With Montana in Film Making

Fields said other states are ramping up spending, thus bringing more states in competition to Montana.

“One of the problems is that we actually are out of incentives,” she said. “We've been very successful, but we're at a do or die year in 2025 where we may not be competitive anymore, because there are about 40 states that have incentives, and they've all gone up, except for Montana. I've already been told to look at Oklahoma and Canada for these Montana stories that I produce, in fact, Texas went from $40 million to $200 million because they wanted our economic impact. We've been so successful that people are trying to take that from us now. So I just want to be clear about that.”