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Houston Comedian Mo Amer announced on Jimmy Kimmel Live that he just finished shooting his sitcom in Houston. The first sitcom to ever be shot in Houston and the crowd including Kimmel seemed to be shocked that it’s the first. I’m surprised more television shows aren’t filmed in Houston or Texas in general. I know Dallas and Austin get shows like this on a regular. Houston has seen more reality shows lately. Maybe there will be more to come. The sitcom will be called “Mo” he said and I believe it will be released on Netflix. He also has a new standup comedy special releasing on Netflix call Mohammed in Texas. 

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9 hours ago, citykid09 said:

Houston Comedian Mo Amer announced on Jimmy Kimmel Live that he just finished shooting his sitcom in Houston. The first sitcom to ever be shot in Houston and the crowd including Kimmel seemed to be shocked that it’s the first. I’m surprised more television shows aren’t filmed in Houston or Texas in general. I know Dallas and Austin get shows like this on a regular. Houston has seen more reality shows lately. Maybe there will be more to come. The sitcom will be called “Mo” he said and I believe it will be released on Netflix. He also has a new standup comedy special releasing on Netflix call Mohammed in Texas. 

These days, with equipment being smaller and more generally available, and talent being able to travel more easily, where things get filmed is largely about money.  Most often, that money is expressed as tax and other incentives.

There's a reason that Netflix has a massive, and still growing, studio complex in New Mexico.  New Mexico lobbied hard to get Netflix and make it financially viable.  It happens all the time.   For a while, most of the big television productions moved to Vancouver, because it started offering enough incentives for the studios to move production up there.  That ended up being the seed for what is now a thriving entertainment production industry in that city.

Very occasionally, you'll have a production tied to a particular city because talent doesn't want to travel. But that is super rare, and only happens when a production is reliant on talent.  (Stuff like late night talk shows.) 

The only time in recent memory that I can think of when money hasn't been the cause of a big shift in production was when Los Angeles laid down the chroma green bike lanes downtown.  That caught the production companies that make car commercials by surprise because it ruined the visuals they were used to using, affected continuity, and made it harder to paint out the equipment from the finished product.  They quickly moved car commercial production to Seattle, Portland, Chicago, and other places.  One production company even re-paved a road in a state park in Nevada in order to shoot its commercial.  The public lost access to half the park for a day, but gained a nice new road.

Houston has an organization that's supposed to bring productions here: The Houston Film Commission.

According to its web site, the last movie that was made here was a slasher film set in Sugar Land, and that was in 2016 — six years ago.  If you're looking for someone to blame for Houston not being on the national radar, the Film Commission is a good place to start.

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Here are the reasons that the Houston Film Commission lists for why companies should film in Houston:

Quote
  • When filming in the Houston area your project may be eligible for up to a 2.5% addition to the standard Texas Production Incentive
  • With 2.3 million residents, Houston is the most populous city in the southern US and covers more than 634 square miles.
  • The western face of the Houston skyline is one of the most iconic in the US.
  • Eighty-three languages are spoken in Houston.
  • Houston has 50,632 acres of total park space.
  • The Greater Houston area has 14 major institutions of higher learning.
  • Texas Medical Center (TMC) with 49 member institutions-including M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, the No. 1 cancer hospital in the country-is the largest medical complex in the world.
  • Houston has 5 professional sports teams and four major sports venues.

That's a crap list.  The only one that means anything is the first one.  The rest have absolutely no bearing on whether a company will film in Houston or not. 

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The first eight episodes of the series "Mo" have been released. The comedy/drama was created by and stars Houston comic Mo Amer. a Palestine refugee, and was filmed in and around Houston.
It has received a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Set aside a few hours to binge; I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the writing and how Houston is incorporated seamlessly into the storyline. I hope it's picked up for future seasons.

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I binged-watched it over a weekend, and really liked it! First off- gorgeous cinematography and great characters. This show has a lot of heart, and it feels very Houston. 

I personally feel like it would’ve benefitted from being in an hour-long format and maybe getting a couple more episodes, but I really enjoyed what I saw and I hope it gets a season 2!

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On 8/31/2022 at 5:12 PM, dbigtex56 said:

The first eight episodes of the series "Mo" have been released. The comedy/drama was created by and stars Houston comic Mo Amer. a Palestine refugee, and was filmed in and around Houston.
It has received a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Set aside a few hours to binge; I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the writing and how Houston is incorporated seamlessly into the storyline. I hope it's picked up for future seasons.

Netflix has a habit of canceling shows non-stop (see "House of Cards").

 

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The 5th season of Netflix's Love is Blind will have a Houston cast.

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/arts-culture/2023/09/18/462701/love-is-blind-houston-season-5-premiere-friday/

Love_Is_Blind_n_S5_E6_00_31_48_22R-1000x

There's also a little bit about the increasing number of productions coming to town in the recent past, including some that have not been announced yet.

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Drake says he bought a home in Houston. He says Houston is the city that started his career. He was in town for 2 shows Sunday and Monday night at Toyota Center.

 

"Let me to tell you something. I'm excited I get to share this with night two. I had to make it official first, but, I've been looking for a long time, trying to figure out, you know, the right place, for me to live, where I belong outside of Toronto. And I finally, after all these years, found me a place in Houston, Texas, So y'all be seeing me a lot. Yeah," Drake said to the audience.

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/trending/article/drake-buys-place-in-houston-18375151.php

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Houston Chronicle Continues its Campaign to Prove "Math is Hard"

Today's Chronicle treats us to the headline:  "More renters and homeowners moved to Austin and Dallas than Houston since 2019, study finds".

If one bothers to read the article, one finds that (1), the "study" did not even purport to examine or demonstrate how many people moved to Austin, Dallas or Houston (2) the "study" did not show larger numbers for Austin than for Houston.

What the study examined was the percentage (and by extrapolation, the number) of homeowners and renters who moved into their current homes since 2019.  It tells us nothing whatsoever about how many people moved to the respective cities from elsewhere.

The numbers reported by the study (that the Chronicle can't grasp):

Austin has 955,207 occupied housing units; "about 39%" of them (372,531) are occupied by people who moved into them since 2019.

Dallas has 2.8 million occupied housing units; "almost 35% (910,000) are occupied by people who moved into them since 2019.

Houston has 2.6 million occupied housing unit; "34%" (884,000) are occupied by people who moved in to them since 2019.

Again, this was falsely reported by the Chronicle as showing that more people moved to Austin since 2019 than moved to Houston. What it actually shows is that more people in Houston moved in to their current residence since 2019 than did so in Austin. (And even more did so in Dallas.)  This one is especially maddening because they took the story directly from Lending Tree, which reported it correctly!  I guess they are also demonstrating to us that English is hard.

 

 

 

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