As the global competition for film and TV production gets more and more intense, Steven Demmler believes that Texas can throw its hat into the race.
Demmler, a writer-producer who recently worked with Paul Schrader on his 2024 film “Oh, Canada” and Dev Patel on his Sundance-premiered “Rabbit Trap,” also serves as CEO of Talon Entertainment.
Through that company, Demmler has entered several ventures such as Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah’s genre production outlet SpectreVision, their pop culture collectible company Mutant formed alongside Mondo and Alamo Drafthouse co-founder Tim League, the St. Petersburg production facility Coastal Creative, and most recently, the 11-acre Dallas soundstage facility South Side Studios.
“We’ve managed to build this kind of small, modest but vertically integrated system so that we can now feed projects through all of it and add value at every step of the way,” Demmler told TheWrap’s Office With a View. “Hopefully it will allow us to stand up projects that we couldn’t if we didn’t have the ability to pull each of those levers together.”
Talon oversaw a significant refurbishment of South Side and is now looking to bring productions onto its lot. It may get help from the Texas State Senate, which is currently debating whether to more than double the cap of its production tax incentive program from $200 million to nearly $500 million.
Demmler talked about the process of bringing South Side Studios into the 21st century along with what he learned from his father, who was the longtime propmaster of “Saturday Night Live.” The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
You got your start in showbiz with your father, Steve, on the set of “SNL.” Was there anything you learned there that you’ve kept with you as a producer?
My father was there from the first episode all the way through the end of 2021. My first job was on that set catching cue cards. Illegally. I think I was child labor (*laughs*). But I think a core memory has always been how hectic it seems. Right before a sketch coming back from break or before the open or whatever, you have a hundred something people running around.
It seems insane to the audience, but in reality, it’s the most precisely controlled process ever and it’s because each department head and each person on the crew knew their jobs, were incredible at their jobs, and just had full trust in each other to take care of their stuff. So I learned that if you fill your team with quality people, when things get hectic, it will be controlled as opposed to chaos.
I also just saw a bunch of instances of Lorne Michaels out on the floor for his crew, letting them know he’s there standing by them. and just kind of being a good visible leader without kind of infringing on that process or taking autonomy away from department heads. I think that’s stayed with me and how I try to run things both as an executive and on set.
Tell us about the history of South Side Studios and how Talon came to acquire it.
Its original use was a cotton distribution warehouse and facility back in the 1940s, and it served that purpose for a long time. Then around the early 90s, it was converted into a place to make movies, and my understanding is that they constructed a non-functioning water tower. Warner Brothers has one, and they figured that, without knowing better, you should have one.
So they built but it went into bankruptcy. It was purchased by a property developer who was buying up a lot of land and it sat there for a couple decades. However, given that it’s a large space in downtown Dallas, it wound up shooting some projects without ever being improved over the years.
What sort of projects were filmed there?
The TNT “Dallas” reboot shot there, and the Netflix show “Queen of the South” shot a couple seasons there as well. There’s also been YouTube groups like Dude Perfect that have shot there because it was the only large space in Dallas that resembled a film studio.
So a friend who I’ve worked with before when he was the St. Petersburg, Florida film commissioner, Tony Armer, became the Dallas film commissioner in 2022 right after Texas raised the tax incentive to $200 million from … I believe it was $20 million. Armer had been taken around the state to the largest film locations, and South Side was one of them.
Now I had started Talon as a film fund and an outlet for my writing and whatnot, but on, I think, his second or third day on the job, Tony called me and said, “I know this isn’t what you’re doing but I bet you’ll have some ideas if you see it.” So, he flew me out, I toured the property, I met with the property owner and within a week the property owner and I had kind of had a vision for a partnership and what it could look like if we refurbished it.
So how much work needed to be done on the infrastructure?
It took about 18 months to do the work. None of the buildings were soundproofed, so all those productions I just mentioned used to have to hold for train that were passing by,which to me is insane. The first big thing we did was spend a bunch of money doing sound studies figuring out exactly what needed to be built, what materials we needed to bring in to properly mitigate the sound so that these are sound stages that don’t need to hold for trains.
The second thing was security. It’s in downtown Dallas, but being able to protect the IP and ensure a controlled environment is something that studios look for now that was something they worried about as when the studio was first built.
Then we moved on to support buildings. The two primary buildings are both approximately 75,000 square feet and were just big open warehouses. No green rooms, no hair and makeup, no proper production offices. We went through and developed a plan that included three stages with a virtual production facility and then a layout of those required support facilities as well as a mill and a functioning prop house so the entire facility now is self-sustained.
I understand that Talon held an open house to show off the refurbishments and that you got four times the turnout you expected. Have you received any substantive interest from productions yet?
Yeah, as you said, we had aimed for around 750 guests and I don’t know the actual number because we had somebody doing one of those little clicker things but they got overwhelmed. Somewhere around 3,000 people did show up. but the purpose there was not just to invite industry leaders from all over Texas and L.A. It was to open up to the community, too. We really envision South Side as being both an institutional grade destination for Hollywood in general, but also a creative arts hub for Dallas locals.
That’s why we had everybody from the Mavericks there down to Doug from down the street. In fact, there’s two podcasts I’ve found, video podcasts that just shot there during the opening without ever asking us, and I wound up just popping in when I found them and being a guest on both. The community has really rallied around it. which is amazing.
In terms of actual work being booked, we’ve had a bunch of commercials in here already. We have a film scheduled to begin shooting the end of April and the deal’s not done but is quite far along to shoot in mid-September. Tony Armer is also currently negotiating with a potential television series and a handful of other commercials and events as well.
As you mentioned, Texas lawmakers recently boosted the state’s film tax incentive program and may do so again. Are you optimistic that there will be continued support on that front?
That question is kind of related to another one that I get a lot which is: “Why did we spend the time and money in Texas where production is behind where it could be and where some other states are and certainly where some other nations are creditwise?”
The answer to both questions is that I see a groundswell in a future where Texas, which is the 13th largest economy in the world, flips a switch and becomes a production hub. It’s already economically very business friendly. The only thing right now preventing it from being a larger hub and a place for that production to seek out is the incentive structure. and in my opinion, when I was first looking at the studio, the jump to $200 million from $20 million is the start of a J-curve.
Since I’ve taken over the studio, we’ve seen the government engage with us. They gave us the motion picture development zone designation, which helped us on with a construction rebate, and on the 20% rebate Texas gives for an incentive, our studio gets an extra 2.5%. So, we actually offer a 22.5% rebate if you shoot with us.
Texas filmmakers have also come together to work with the local and state government to begin the discussion on pushing this incentive up higher, which I’m sure you’re aware of right now. They’re kicking around this almost $500 million improvement bill that would up the incentive meaningfully, raise the rate from 20 to 30%, which makes us extremely competitive all of a sudden. That’s what we were betting on when we acquired South Side. For decades, Texas-born filmmakers from Terrence Malick to David Lowery have to leave home to go shoot and they want to be home shooting. I think we’re finally at a point in Texas where the state gets that they’re starting to see the path economically for it to make sense.
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