SXSW 2025: Tapping Into Texas’s Vast Potential to Become the Next Cinematic Frontier

This year’s SXSW film festival in Austin blew into town with a considerable tailwind of enthusiasm for the Lone Star state’s film and TV future. Every state in the union can claim unique cultures, geographies, and mythologies, but there’s no disputing that Texas looms very large in our collective cultural imagination. It’s a state that takes very seriously the notion that it’s really a country.

Texas’s hold on our imagination is evident in how many great films and TV series are set there (whether they’re actually filmed there or not—we’ll get to that in a second),

“Special Ops: Lioness” Cinematographer & Director Paul Cameron on Taylor Sheridan’s International Thriller

As director of photography, Paul Cameron has shot such disparate films and series as Man On Fire, Collateral, Déjà Vu, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and Westworld.  He has worked with a slew of top-tier directors, including Michael Mann, Tony Scott, and Jonathan Nolan. Now, for Paramount+’s acclaimed limited series, Special Ops: Lioness, Paul Cameron – as he did with Westworld – worked both as a cinematographer and director.

Morgan Freeman Joins Nicole Kidman in Taylor Sheridan’s “Lioness” for Paramount+

The stars are aligning for Taylor Sheridan’s new series Lioness for Paramount+.

Deadline reports that Oscar-winner Morgan Freeman has joined the cast of Sheridan’s latest, which is being executive produced by two of its stars, Zoe Saldana and Nicole Kidman, and also stars Laysla De Oliveira. The cast is rounded out by Dave Annable, Jill Wagner, LaMonica Garrett, James Jordan, Austin Hébert, Jonah Wharton, Stephanie Nur, and Hannah Love Lanier.