Texas is riding high as Hollywood’s go-to story setting, lassoing major series from two powerhouse TV franchises this spring.
“Yellowstone” spinoff “Dutton Ranch” startled viewers by relocating Montana’s royal couple, Rip (Cole Hauser) and Beth (Kelly Reilly), to North Texas for the new Paramount+ series that began May 15. The Lone Star surprise continued on May 19, when ABC announced a new “Grey’s Anatomy” spinoff headed for remote West Texas.
That’s right − the Shonda Rhimes series, famously set in Seattle’s Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, will see the upcoming show take place at a medical center in rural Texas. The unnamed spinoff, slated for midseason 2027, is the first “Grey’s” offspring not set on the West Coast (“Private Practice”) or in a major city (“Station 19″).
“That ‘Grey’s’ news was pretty huge,” says Cindy McCreery, chair of the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. “But we’re seeing an increase in shows coming to Texas. There’s so much diversity in terms of landscapes and different industries. People want to tell stories from here right now.”
‘Yellowstone’ franchise brought ‘Landman,’ now ‘Dutton Ranch’ to Texas
A major source of the TV love is, of course, the “Yellowstone effect.” Creator Taylor Sheridan’s hit shows like contemporary Western “Yellowstone” have made rural-set dramas irresistible for networks and streamers. Sheridan has literally moved his universe’s production to Texas with his SGS Studios, a massive 450,000-square-foot production campus outside Fort Worth that opened in 2025.Montana-set shows can still be a shot away from the Texas heat (including the snowstorm scene from “1923”) as well as shows such as “Lioness” and Oklahoma’s “Tulsa King.”
“Dutton Ranch” was seemingly headed to Beth and Rip’s new ranch in Dillon, Montana, after “Yellowstone” ended in 2024. Two months before the series release, however, executive producer and director Christina Alexandra Voros told USA TODAY that “Dutton Ranch,” and the Duttons, had moved to Texas. Turns out a devastating Montana fire sends Rip and Beth to their new life. The 1,500-mile location change was explained for story reasons, with the multigenerational Montana family now outsiders in a new, gritty environment for their spinoff. The “Dutton Ranch” locations are not far from the studio and Sheridan’s own West Texas ranches: the 600-acre Bosque Ranch in Weatherford and the historic 6666 (Four Sixes) Ranch (site of another possible spinoff series).