NESTLED AMONG the sagebrush and rocky, inhospitable terrain at the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, an octagonal hogan sits uninhabited. Just a few weeks earlier, a flurry of activity—camera crews, lighting engineers, actors—took place here on the back lot of Camel Rock Studios, filming scenes for the third season of Dark Winds, the 1970s-set AMC crime drama based on the books by Tony Hillerman.
Built for the production on the 100-acre Pueblo of Tesuque property, the traditional dwelling serves as the backdrop for exterior shots of Navajo Tribal Police officer Joe Leaphorn’s (played by Zahn McClarnon) ancestral home. Inside, on one of Camel Rock’s eight active sets, the Leaphorn kitchen comes complete with shag carpet and evidence of the investigator’s love for RC Cola.
The bright New Mexico landscapes, which can be gleaned through the kitchen’s windows, are actually a lit-up photo mural, set about four or five feet from the windows’ interior between soundstages. It’s a convincing effect, even when you’re on set and can see past the illusion.
Joe Leaphorn’s home on Dark Winds is actually a Camel Rock Studios soundstage.
Photograph courtesy of Michael Moriatis/AMC.
“When I think about Dark Winds and New Mexico, the locations have really been a character in the TV series,” says director Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals), who helms the series. For many audiences, the success of Dark Winds opens a new window into the Land of Enchantment and its wonders. “I don’t know if the audience has seen the Southwest the way that we’re showing it,” he adds. “Specifically, behind Camel Rock Studios, those badlands, mesas, and escarpments are something I haven’t seen much.”
That might not be the case much longer, however, with the booming number of movie and television productions happening throughout the state. The New Mexico Film Office lists more than 30 projects produced in 2024, including the third season of Fox’s The Cleaning Lady, Netflix’s Western romance Ransom Canyon, and an untitled production from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan. All this comes on the Oscar-winning heels of Oppenheimer, which took home seven Academy Awards in March, including Best Picture, Director, and Cinematography.
And the hits keep coming. In late September, Netflix released Gallup-born director Sydney Freeland’s Rez Ball, which follows the fictional Chuska Warriors as the Navajo Nation high school basketball team competes for a New Mexico state championship. Ari Aster (Midsommar, Hereditary), who grew up in Albuquerque, is in postproduction for the New Mexico–set Eddington, with a glittering cast of Emma Stone, Austin Butler, and Pedro Pascal. And Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men) recently wrapped filming in Albuquerque for Honey Don’t!, the second in his “B-movie lesbian trilogy,” starring Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, and Chris Evans.
New Mexico landscapes star in ”Rez Ball.”
Photograph courtesy of R. Lewis Jacobs/Netflix.
NEW MEXICO’S LONG HISTORY with the silver screen dates to Indian Day School (1898), a brief Thomas Edison film of students attending Isleta Indian School, before gaining a foothold in the golden era of Westerns in the late 1940s and 1950s. While a smattering of notable productions (Red Dawn, Young Guns, The Milagro Beanfield War, Lonesome Dove) were made in the ensuing years, the passage of the Film Production Tax Credit in 2003 sparked a new wave of interest.
Thanks in part to the incentives, which offer a base of 25 percent and a maximum of 40 percent tax credit for productions filmed here, New Mexico has witnessed more than $4 billion in direct spending from the film and television industries over the past five years, with a total economic impact of close to $5 billion.
New facilities have cropped up across the state, echoing the growing number of streaming services. Among the developments over the past five years are NBCUniversal’s new 80,000-square-foot production facility and three soundstages in Albuquerque; film financing and production studio 828 Productions’s relocation of its California headquarters to Las Cruces; and the development of Aspect Media Village and its eight soundstages on the former campus of the Santa Fe University of Art and Design. In late June, Netflix announced a $2 billion expansion at its Albuquerque Studios, which includes adding four soundstages to its current eight as well as two back lots covering 108 acres.
“Our experience filming in New Mexico has always been incredible—incredible crews, amazing places to shoot,” says Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos.
No doubt, the camera has always loved New Mexico. With landscapes that vary from white gypsum sands and canyon lands to forested hills and wetlands, it convincingly stands in for locations around the world (when it’s not starring as itself). “Wherever they’re trying to be, there’s a probable chance that we have the landscape to match,” says Mark Roper, interim director of the New Mexico Film Office.
While much of the movie magic happens in northern and central New Mexico, the state’s Rural Uplift program, which provides an additional 10 percent tax credit for productions filming more than 60 miles from Albuquerque or Santa Fe, is helping to widen the spotlight. Two films, Brewmance and 3, recently wrapped at the 300,000-square-foot 828 Productions.
It isn’t just the attraction of prime location shooting that has attracted Hollywood’s gaze. “We’ve gradually built a really solid base of talent in the film industry,” says Roper. The prospects of steady work and ample training—including the state-funded Film Crew Advancement Program and a Pre-Employment Training Program—have made New Mexico a great place to live and work in the industry. In fact, among MovieMaker magazine’s “Best Places to Live and Work” for 2024, Albuquerque (No. 2, Big Cities), Las Cruces (No. 8, Small Cities/Towns), and Santa Fe (No. 1 Small Cities/Towns) all rank. “That makes it easier for productions to come in and film,” Roper adds. “They’re not having to import or train.”
There are currently about 8,000 New Mexicans employed in the industry, according to the New Mexico Film Office. That includes directors, actors, grips, art directors, location scouts, gaffers, lighting technicians, and camera operators, among other vital roles. These talented people are not only essential to making movie magic. They’re also the secret ingredient that keeps non–New Mexico directors coming back and New Mexico–based directors, like Eyre, staying.
“A New Mexico crew is small enough that it’s a family and large enough to be an A-list crew,” says Eyre. “All these New Mexican crew members appreciate the spotlight being turned on New Mexico and on Diné characters. People really care about what they’re working on.”
Christine McHugh, a past president of the New Mexico chapter of Women in Film and an intimacy coordinator in film and TV, believes that level of commitment works both ways. “If you consider someone like Vince Gilligan, he’s been working with the same people for 17 years,” she says. “That hardly ever happens in the industry.”
Rez Ball star Jojo Jackson grew up in the “boonies” between Gallup and Shiprock, but Hollywood found him anyway.
NEW MEXICO’S RECENT renaissance also coincides with more diverse stories being told in film and TV, especially for Native Americans telling Indigenous stories and presenting unexplored narratives.
“Native filmmaking in my world has been around for quite a long time,” says Eyre, a member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes who has lived in New Mexico for more than a decade. “Within the past five years, certainly, it’s exploded.”
When Smoke Signals came out in 1998, Eyre expected Native-led independent films to take off. “It took a long, long time for Native film and TV to really get their recognition,” he says, noting that shows like Rutherford Falls (2021–2022), Reservation Dogs (2021–2023), and Dark Winds (2022–) helped break through. “Hollywood literally started to say these other stories are a new place to put stories within—allegorical, historical, and creation stories,” Eyre says. “Now I hope that door stays open.”
While it may be exciting to see New Mexico creating Hollywood dreams, the industry’s success was a long time coming. It’s the magic of New Mexico—its history, people, and cultures—that lures, but it’s the homegrown talent that audiences are treated to again and again. It’s captured in the actors; the camera crews who, as Eyre says, treat the setting as a character; and the filmmakers who showcase New Mexico’s natural beauty.
“We’re doing much more work than Los Angeles right now,” says McHugh, noting the impact of last year’s Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild of America strikes and this year’s possible strike with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees crews. “I think studios are having a hard time figuring out what the new model for success is in this world of streaming and moving away from theatrical releases and ad-based revenue. But they know they’ve got a really good tax incentive here in New Mexico. That plus the crews, the weather, the locales—there’s a lot to recommend about New Mexico.”
Read more: First-time actor Jojo Jackson shows off his skills in Rez Ball.
