Episode Details

In this edition of the On Location podcast, Julian Newby meets Alfred Cervantes, vice-president and executive director of the Houston Film Commission.

In his pre-film commission days Cervantes worked on a number of productions that featured Houston as a location, including 1995’s Apollo 13, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks. In the podcast he explains how the Howard achieved the weightless scenes in the movie – using NASA's KC-135 aircraft, famously nicknamed the Vomit Comet by cast and crew.

Cervantes also explains how, by stacking a 31% state grant with a new 10% local incentive (capped at $100K per project), the city provides a dual-incentive structure that is putting more cash back into producer’s pockets than ever before. 

The incentives mean that more TV, feature films are being attracted to the city and surrounding areas, including two features shot there in 2025:Mattress Mack, starring Billy Magnussen; and Eleven Days, an upcomingthriller directed by Peter Landesman and co-written by Kevin Sheridan andbased on the 2004 book Eleven Days in Hell: The 1974 Carrasco Prison Siege at Huntsville, Texas by William T. Harper.

The hit Netflix TV series Mo is also set in Houston, where Mo – played by Mo Amer – straddles the line between two cultures, three languages and a pending asylum request while hustling to support his Palestinian family.

In the podcast Julian and Alfred discuss why some of us don’t automatically recognise Houston in Film, TV and commercials, and how this is gradually changing as productions become aware of the varied architecture, the sophisticated infrastructure and the favourable economics of shooting in the area.

Among the many past productions shot in and around the Houston area include 1970’s  Brewster McCloud; 1984’s Blood Simple; 1990’s RoboCop 2; the aforementioned Apollo 13; 1998’s Armageddon; and 2011’s Sean Penn and Brad Pitt starrer Tree of Life…