Top-Ranked Netflix Show is Texas Story
Made in New Mexico with Local Labor

Capitol Inside
April 20, 2025

The new Netflix series Ransom Canyon could have been a leading contender for a slice of a half-billion dollar pie if a film incentives measure that the Texas Senate approved this week had been in force when the show was on the drawing boards a year or two ago.

Ransom Canyon is set in a lush swath of the Texas Hill Country where the biggest landowners are trying to fend off devious water wranglers from Austin. The steamy 10-part series that the streaming app released on Thursday has a cast that's led by Josh Duhamel, Minka Kelly and James Brolin. It's based on a series of books by Amarillo native Jodi Thomas, a highly-acclaimed author who's specialized in historical and western romance novels that take place in the Lone Star State.

Billed for weeks as the next Yellowstone with more romantic drama, Ransom Canyon was rated as the number one series on Netflix before the end of its debut weekend. The entertainment media already is sizzling with speculation on a possible season 2.

The Ransom Canyon in the series looks nothing like the lakefront community outside of Lubbock with the same name. But Ransom Canyon may seem a bit unauthentic to anyone who knows much about Texas as a consequence of the scenery that features spectacular vistas from the fictional Texas town in the show with the snow-covered peaks of the Rocky Mountains glistening on the horizon as the backdrop.

That's a function of the fact that the series was filmed in or near the New Mexico cities of Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Las Vegas on the Rockies' southern edge because the Land of Enchantment had a big-league program for enticing movie and television productions to the state and Texas did not. The New Mexico Film Office revealed this week that more than 700 New Mexicans were employed during the production of Ransom Canyon there.

Thanks to an unlikely triumvirate of Taylor Sheridan, Matthew McConaughey and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, Texas could be coming out of a self-induced coma as a filmmaking magnet with a $500 million infusion for incentives that cleared the Legislature's lower chamber on the day before Ransom Canyon popped up on the streaming menu.

Sponsored by GOP State Senator Joan Huffman of Houston, Senate Bill 2 went to the House on a vote of 23-8 with Republicans and Democrats on both sides of the fight. Six Republicans and two Democrats voted against the film incentives measure. The proposal has encountered opposition and outrage from conservatives who've portrayed it as a government handout for Hollywood liberals. SB 22's critics contend that the money should go to property tax relief instead.

But Patrick has been leading the charge to resurrect the Texas film industry since becoming friends with Sheridan two years ago. Sheridan is a Cranfills Gap native who's had phenomenal success as a writer, director and television series mastermind who created Yellowstone and spinoffs 1883 and 1923 and The Madison in the works. Sheridan's star-studded resume includes his work as the brainchild for the 1883, 1923 and Tulsa King - a series that he filmed in Oklahoma with Sylvester Stallone as a displaced New York mobster.

Landman is the only Sheridan series that's been shot in his home state. Production for season 2 of the Paramount+ series about life and love in the West Texas oil patch has been under way in Fort Worth. But Sheridan told Patrick that he would be making more films and TV shows in Texas with competitive investments from the state. McConaughey testified to a Senate committee in support of SB 22 with a promise to do more projects in Texas if the legislation becomes law.

McConaughey - an Oscar winner who was born in Uvalde and raised in Longview - said at the hearing that he would be willing to sacrifice some creative freedom and independence if the politicians here don't want to subsidize projects that portray Texas in a negative fashion. Sheridan hasn't indicated publicly that he would go along with restrictions on his own creative license. But the potential to land future Sheridan television productions and movies he might want to make here could have a pacifying effect on potential censors as a result of the boosts they would give the economy while putting the Texas program back on the map.

Patrick, the deeply-religious Texas Senate president, envisions Texas as a hub for faith-based productions. Ransom Canyon doesn't have a religious theme or any holy overtones. But it has less nudity and violence than Yellowstone - and the kids don't do fentanyl or THC when they're on camera.

Most importantly, perhaps, the top-rated Netflix series doesn't have a disparaging word to say about Texas. The Lone Star State is more like a land of milk and honey with towering mountains where mole hills and windmills would be in real life.

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

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