The free field guide to screening your film in Texas.

You do not need another PDF. You especially do not need to hand over an email address for a list of theaters you could find yourself, from a company that would like to sell you something later. That is a fair objection to a free download, and most of the time it is the right call.

So here is the honest version. Every room in the directory is already on this site, free, with no gate: seven regional editions, close to eighty rooms, every entry checked against the venue’s own website on September 4, 2026, every rate sheet linked. If you want the list, the list is there. Read it and skip the rest of this post.

The field guide is a different object, and it exists because of how the list gets used.

What the guide is for.

When you are calling venues you are not reading a blog post. You are on the phone with a rentals manager in Plainview with a notebook open, trying to remember whether the Fair charges a copyright fee (it does, and your own rights should waive it) and whether the State in Gainesville plays Blu-ray (it does not). You want one thing you can print, hand to your producer, and mark up.

That is the guide. Twelve pages. The shape of the state, region by region. The three doors onto a screen: being programmed, renting the room, or a festival that owns or borrows one. The two booking worlds, which is the single most useful practical point in it: independent venues book at the venue, chains book at corporate, and pitching the wrong one costs you weeks. The five things that decide yes or no before anyone talks money: format, lead time, rights, insurance, and who sells the tickets. A first-calls table for every region with the published route in, and a festivals table for the ones that pay Texas filmmakers or say in writing that they prefer local work. What has changed and what is gone since 2022, which is more than you would think. And a checklist for the first email.

What is not in it. Dollar figures, because rate sheets change without notice and the venue’s page is the source, so the guide links the page. Personal names, unless the venue’s own site lists that person for bookings, because a wrong email to the wrong person costs you the relationship before it starts. And anything about the chains beyond one section on why they are not your first call.

Where it came from.

I built the first version of this in June, for myself. I needed to know where a Texas-shot slate could play in Texas, and nobody had written it down. That version was a distributor’s map: corporate film buyers, the event-cinema channel, which houses can run an Academy-qualifying week. Useful for a distributor. Nearly useless for a filmmaker with one finished film and no distributor, which describes most of the people who will read this.

So this edition starts over from the filmmaker’s side, on newer research. Between June and September the map moved, or turned out to have moved already. The Paramount in Austin closed for restoration. The Coyote Drive-In in Fort Worth closes on September 7. The Marfa Film Festival has been paused since 2019, which the June version did not know. Several venues’ websites were down when we checked, and the regional editions say which ones to call instead of pretending they answered. The Austin edition alone sets aside three rooms the June version leaned on: Violet Crown and the Alamo, which are chains now, and the Paramount, which is closed for repairs into 2027.

Get it.

It will cost.... nothing... not even an email address. Just hope this helps!

If your film is not finished yet, this page also explains what we do, which is the part before the screening: the plan, the paperwork, the crew, and the system that runs a shoot in Texas. If the honest answer is that you don’t need us yet, that is the answer you will get. And if the problem is money rather than a screen, start with the AFS grant machine.