What do the movies Apollo 13, Urban Cowboy, Terms of Endearment, Armageddon, Rushmore, and Robocop 2 have in common? They were all filmed mostly or partially right here in Houston.
According to GoCompare.com, Houston is the third-most-filmed city for movie and TV productions — 1,279, to be exact — in Texas. Similarly, Texas happens to be the third-most-filmed state — 8,164 in total — in the country. Houston also boasts the most-filmed location in the state: Johnson Space Center. It's been used for the aforementioned Apollo and Armageddon, as well as Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, and the Clint Eastwood movie Space Cowboys.
Statewide, the city that's been filmed the most is Austin, with 2,257 movie and TV productions. Those productions range from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original and the remake) to Miss Congeniality, to virtually anything local star filmmakers Robert Rodriguez and Houston-born Richard Linklater have shot. Dallas is at second place with 1,537 — with such productions as Robocop, Boys Don't Cry, and, of course, the TV show Dallas doing film time there.
San Antonio is at fourth with 564 (remember in Pee Wee's Big Adventure when Pee Wee tried to look for his bike at The Alamo's non-existent basement?), and Fort Worth (where Walker, Texas Ranger shot) rounds out the top five with 331.
The site compiled the list from the "filming locations" section of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Here is the list of most-filmed (movies and TV productions) cities in Texas:
1. Austin: 2,257 (Miss Congeniality, Boyhood, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, True Grit)
2. Dallas: 1,537 (Robocop, Boys Don't Cry, Any Given Sunday)
3. Houston: 1,279 (Apollo 13, Armageddon, Urban Cowboy)
4. San Antonio: 564 (Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, Miss Congeniality, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure)
5. Fort Worth: 331 (Logan's Run, Necessary Roughness, Walker, Texas Ranger)
6. Arlington: 179 (The Rookie, Prison Break, Entourage)
7. El Paso: 177 (The Counselor, The Day After Tomorrow, Man of Fire)
8: Denton: 137 (Necessary Roughness, Armageddon, Bonnie and Clyde)
9. Corpus Christi: 97 (Pearl Harbor, Selena, The Mentalist)
10: Plano: 85 (Dallas, Wishbone)
