Howdy folks and greetings from the Great Plains of North Texas!
I think this is great news. The Tesuque Pueblo tribe in Northern New Mexico moved their casino business and realized the 75,000 sq ft building with mostly open space would be perfect as a film studio.
It's called Camel Rock Studios:
Hey, if you can't beat 'em, build your own studio. Native Americans have been misrepresented, marginalized, and generally lied about by Hollywood for decades.
Plus they've been played, ridiculously, by white actors in most films. Here's just a few of them:
Burt Reynolds
Burt Lancaster
Chuck Connors
Harry Brandon
Johnny Depp
It'll be interesting to see if they make some movies from the Indian's point of view for a change.
Their first major movie
Tom Hanks is using the new studio for his upcoming Western which is called News Of The World.
I know, it doesn't sound like a Western but it is. I love the sound of the plot. A Texas cowboy is hired to take a 10 yr old white girl back to her people.
She'd been kidnapped by the Kiowa when she was 4 yrs old so that's the only life she's known and she does NOT want to go to live with the whites. Well, it sounds like they have all kinds of adventures on their trip back to "civilization."
Hanks stars in it but is also one of the producers. I think this "road trip" through the Wild West in 1870 with very unlikely travel companions is going to be very interesting indeed! They don't have a trailer for it yet unfortunately.
The film industry is booming
In New Mexico. Since Breaking Bad was filmed there many others projects have been started and Stranger Things moved there for their fourth season.
The biggest news: Netflix bought a studio in Albuquerque and just made it their hub for production. They plan on spending a billion dollars in production in the next ten years.
Not just them either. NBC Universal is building a television and movie studio just North of Albuquerque, an investment of 1.1 billion dollars. New Mexico is giving the production companies tax breaks and tax credits for creating thousands of new jobs in the state.
Much needed help for the tribe
As far as the Tesuque Tribe, they're small, just 525 members and like most tribes in the country they're in serious need of jobs and financial help so the new studio will go towards supplying them with health care, jobs, and other benefits.
Their 17,500 acres of tribal lands have already been used in over 20 movies and I think that number will dramatically increase now and they'll actually make money from those films.
Any American Indians have been Hollywood outsiders since Hollywood was formed. Now the entire Native American population has a studio to use where THEY run the show.
I think we're gonna see some great films come out and if they're Westerns they'll be historically accurate.
Thanks for stopping by folks, God bless you all!
-jonboy
Texas
PS- By they way, the name of the studio, Camel Rock, is named after a famous rock formation close to the studio. Looks like a Camel lying down resting in the desert.
Or at least that's what it used to look like. Unfortunately the "nose" fell off the Camel's head so now it looks like this... which doesn't look like anything. lol.
Seems like they could re-attach it!