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Arts & Entertainment

Dallas is one of the world's most-filmed cities, but it still trails Austin

Dallas is one of the top 25 most-filmed cities in the world, according to travel website gocompare.com.

Big D chimes in at No. 24 on the list of most-filmed cities with 1,537 movie and TV productions, based on data the website collected from the Internet Movie Database.

Los Angeles, of course, is in first with 33,369. Long Island is at No. 25, with 1,306. In between, there are locales such as Toronto, Buenos Aires, Philadelphia and Rome. Austin checks in at No. 14.

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This may come as a surprise to anyone who has been watching the struggle to keep productions in Dallas. Fox drama The Gifted, one of the most recent high-profile pilots to film in the city, decamped to Atlanta. And after many arguments, the city council decided to vote in favor of keeping USA Network drama Queen of the South for at least the filming of this current season.

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There was even a move to do away with the Dallas Film Commission in 2016.  In a Dallas Morning News story, Council member Lee Kleinman labeled giving money to TV and movie studios as "corporate welfare."

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The incentives that entice filming in Texas have constantly been embattled. The state House completely cut the funding out of the budget but, after Gov. Greg Abbott stepped in, it eventually approved $22 million for film and TV tax incentives, according to a 2017 story by political writer Gromer Jeffers Jr. 

To put it in perspective, Georgia, where The Gifted landed, has $504 million. That total bests even California's $330 million.

Nevertheless, Texas persisted. (It also helps that the time frame used was from 1874 to 2017.) The state still lands at No. 3 in the list of most-filmed states. California tops the list, with New York in second.

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GoCompare spokesman James Barnes said that the list is compiled using "any instance of on-location filming, so it could be a fleeting scene." That means that The Gifted also counts for Atlanta, which came in at No. 10 on the list of most-filmed cities.

Short films count but "it doesn't include video games," said Barnes. "And we cleaned up the data by removing film studios" from the IMDB.com data.

Dallas ranks second in Texas, behind Austin.

The recent boom in reality TV shows such as The Real Housewives of Dallas, Little Women: Dallas, Cheaters and this season's Married At First Sight have helped keep Dallas high on that list.

The rest of the Texas top 10, in order: Houston; San Antonio; Fort Worth; Arlington; El Paso; Denton; Corpus Christi; and Plano.

The list even drilled down to the most-filmed locations. Central Park in New York is No. 1 in the world. Johnson Space Center in Houston gets the honor for Texas.

That makes sense. One of the movies' favorite lines is "Houston, we have a problem."

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For more TV news, views and reviews, follow @DawnBurkes on Twitter.