REVEALED: How stars including Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey are plotting to DESTROY preachy, woke Hollywood – and make macho films again. Here’s how they’re going to do it: TOM LEONARD

It’s difficult to mistake the southern drawl of one of Hollywood’s best-loved film actors – although the sentiment he’s expressing certainly wouldn’t find much favour in Tinseltown.

‘You ever wonder if this industry of ours is just chasing its own tail?’ asks Woody Harrelson.

‘No, I don’t wonder,’ comes the reply in the equally unmissable tones of fellow actor Matthew McConaughey. ‘Restrictions, regulations, nickel-and-diming productions, political lectures: Hollywood is a flat circle. Round and round, like a record with the sound off.’

‘So, what: you want to turn the record off?’ asks Harrelson.

‘No,’ McConaughey replies. ‘I just want to change the tune.’

This world-weary exchange is delivered at the start of a four-minute promotional film called True To Texas.

Filmed as the pair drive down a sun-scorched desert highway, the clip pays homage to their celebrated turn as hard-bitten police detectives in the gritty 2014 HBO drama series True Detective. But the stars, who are close friends, didn’t shoot this scene simply out of nostalgia.

Harrelson – who rose to fame playing bartender Woody in US sitcom Cheers – and McConaughey – who won an Oscar for his role as a cowboy with Aids in the 2013 drama Dallas Buyers Club – are both born-and-bred Texans.

And, when it comes to resisting the herd-like ‘group think’ of Hollywood, both have inherited the Lone Star State’s famous commitment to independence.

When it comes to resisting the herd-like ‘group think’ of Hollywood, Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey (pictured in Texas at an MLS game between Austin FC and Colorado Rapids), have inherited the famous commitment to independence known to Texans

When it comes to resisting the herd-like ‘group think’ of Hollywood, Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey (pictured in Texas at an MLS game between Austin FC and Colorado Rapids), have inherited the famous commitment to independence known to Texans

With the True To Texas campaign, they are adding their backing to an entertainment revolution that would have seemed unthinkable a decade ago: to topple Left-wing Hollywood’s century-old reign and establish the red state as a movie-making rival to true-blue California.

Neither Harrelson nor McConaughey are card-carrying Democrats – both have identified as centrists – and they are now joining forces with fellow Texans Dennis Quaid and Renee Zellweger, and Texas enthusiast Billy Bob Thornton, as well as local legislators.

McConaughey, who has been weighing up launching his own political career and running as state governor, ended the campaign’s promo film – released earlier this year – with a challenge to Texas politicians: ‘So what do you say . . . you don’t like what Hollywood’s been dishing? Let’s take over the kitchen, yeah!’

It worked. In June, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed SB22, a sweeping film and TV incentive Bill, into law.

It earmarks $1.5 billion (£1.1 billion) of state funds over the next decade to attract big-budget productions to Texas, although the money will come with strings attached. To the alarm of Left-wingers, the likely Republican state governor will be able to veto what projects get subsidised.

The two actors as hard-bitten police detectives Rust Cohle (left) and Marty Hartin in the first series of the gritty drama True Detective, in 2014

The two actors as hard-bitten police detectives Rust Cohle (left) and Marty Hartin in the first series of the gritty drama True Detective, in 2014

Applicants will have to show their film or TV show upholds ‘standards of decency and respect’. That will inevitably be determined by conservative politicians who have said that they intend to use the legislation to ‘export Texas values’ – the antithesis of wokery. 

Additional subsidies will be available for ‘faith-based’ productions and those that promote family values or ‘favourable Texas characteristics’, whatever those are.

Insiders have suggested that divisive social issues such as abortion, gun rights, illegal immigration, drug legalisation and transgenderism – just the sort of themes Hollywood loves to propagandise – will be heavily policed by Texas’s conservative leaders. Other states, such as Louisiana and Georgia, as well as countries including the UK have also

been able to undercut Hollywood by offering more generous financial incentives, but some believe big ol’ Texas, whose economy is booming like no other state, truly has the heft to challenge La La Land.

Many tech companies, including electric car giant Tesla and computer manufacturer Hewlett- Packard, have already decamped from California to Texas, while rich investors including billionaire businessman Ross Perot Jr reportedly want to invest in boosting the local movie industry.

Panicked California politicians have belatedly started throwing subsidies at the film industry, but that often isn’t enough for production companies who have fled Los Angeles in droves to make movies and TV shows in parts of the world that offer not only better tax breaks but substantially less red tape.

This year’s Snow White, featuring a Latina main character, played by Rachel Zegler, and CGI dwarfs, failed at the box office

This year’s Snow White, featuring a Latina main character, played by Rachel Zegler, and CGI dwarfs, failed at the box office

The exodus has further weakened Hollywood’s hold on the industry, say insiders, because actors and crew no longer have to live near the studios in LA.

This spring, actor and 1980s heartthrob Rob Lowe accused California’s complacent leaders of allowing the industry to come close to collapse.

‘It’s cheaper to bring 100 people to Ireland than to walk across the lot at Fox,’ he wailed, explaining why his game show, The Floor, was made near Dublin and not in LA.

Some have predicted that Hollywood – also increasingly vulnerable to climate disasters such as wildfires and floods – may become ‘the next Detroit’, a reference to the once-booming home of the US car industry but now one of America’s most depressed cities. 

Meanwhile, Texas governor Abbott has left little doubt that he sees the production incentive Bill as a political weapon: a means to ‘divert film-making from California and provide it through the lens of traditional American values’. He added: ‘Hollywood’s Leftist, woke ideology is polluting the minds of Americans. It’s time to end it.’

And in that mission, he has some potentially very useful allies. In his second administration, President Donald Trump has launched a widespread assault on his ideological foes, especially in the media.

Amid this crusade against ‘wokeness’ and the influence of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives in the public and private sectors, a group of Right-wing Silicon Valley investors are determined to take the battle to Tinseltown. 

Actor Rob Lowe has accused California’s leaders of allowing the film industry in Hollywood to come close to collapse. ‘It’s cheaper to bring 100 people to Ireland than to walk across the lot at Fox,’ he wailed, explaining why his game show, The Floor, was made near Dublin and not in LA

Actor Rob Lowe has accused California’s leaders of allowing the film industry in Hollywood to come close to collapse. ‘It’s cheaper to bring 100 people to Ireland than to walk across the lot at Fox,’ he wailed, explaining why his game show, The Floor, was made near Dublin and not in LA

They have started a studio – Founders Films – that will focus on making unapologetically anti-woke movies that evoke a Hollywood era that existed before the industry became in thrall to box-ticking DEI requirements and politically-correct casting and scripts.

The company is based in Dallas – yes, Texas again – and is backed by a clutch of tech barons linked to Palantir, a controversial tech company which has championed a macho ‘America First’ ethos and whose immensely sophisticated software has been accused of unethically increasing the surveillance powers of the US and UK governments.

Palantir’s most prominent figure, billionaire Peter Thiel, is a pro-Trump conservative libertarian. Founders Films echoes the name of Thiel’s venture-capital business Founders Fund.

In a pitch sent to investors, Founders Films argues that the ‘American brand is broken. Hollywood is AWOL. Movies have become more ideological, more cautious and less entertaining.’

With the cinema industry in decline amid the growth of online streaming, Hollywood studios addicted to stultifyingly formulaic sequels and superhero films, and the critics’ aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes awash with terribly- rated films, few people could disagree that the industry could do with a jolt to the system. 

Texas has earmarks £1.1billion of state funds to attract big-budget film and TV productions to the state, although the money will come with strings attached, with it being suggested that the  Republican state governor will be able to veto what projects get subsidised

Texas has earmarks £1.1billion of state funds to attract big-budget film and TV productions to the state, although the money will come with strings attached, with it being suggested that the  Republican state governor will be able to veto what projects get subsidised

And few impartial observers could also disagree that Hollywood’s ideological pendulum has in recent years swung wildly to the Left.

Stung by past accusations of sexism and racism, the organisers of the Oscars decided in 2020 that Best Picture contenders had to tick various diversity boxes – reforms that were attacked as ‘Orwellian’.

Not that the big Hollywood studios need any encouragement to be more woke, churning out an endless diet of films that lecture audiences on the virtues of social justice, ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’.

In superhero movies such as The Marvels, Eternals and Wonder Woman, female, black and brown heroes regularly have to be seen to be triumphing over the insidious forces of white, male domination.

Make that heterosexual domination, too. The 2021 film Eternals introduced Marvel Comics’ first ever gay superhero.

It’s relentless. This year’s new Superman star David Corenswet – a fierce Trump critic – highlighted how his planet-saving character is an immigrant (albeit from the planet Krypton rather than Mexico) and sent a rather damning message to Trump’s America about being ‘kinder’ to outsiders.

Texas governor Greg Abbott, pictured with President Trump last month, is using the film and TV incentive Bill  as a political weapon, a means to ‘divert film-making from California and provide it through the lens of traditional American values,’ he says

Texas governor Greg Abbott, pictured with President Trump last month, is using the film and TV incentive Bill  as a political weapon, a means to ‘divert film-making from California and provide it through the lens of traditional American values,’ he says

Conservative critics were furious, but it should have been no more surprising to them than the fact that this year’s new Captain America (who is blond and blue-eyed in the original comics) was black.

Taken singly, each case is hardly something to get worked up about. But the tinkering, critics complain, is now all-consuming.

The worst offender is probably Disney, sidelining much-loved classics with warnings that they contain offensive ‘racial stereotypes’ and wasting millions on ‘progressive’ reboots of children’s films like Toy Story spin-off Lightyear (in which two characters exchange a lesbian kiss) and this year’s live action Snow White –complete with a Latina heroine and CGI dwarfs – that then flop.

But how would Founders Films actually get audiences back in front of the big screen?

According to entertainment industry website Semafor, the studio’s slate of proposed productions includes 102 Minutes, a feature film about the evacuation of New York’s World Trade Centre on 9/11 (with the tagline ‘Courage is contagious’); Operation Pineapple Express, which is a planned dramatisation of the Biden administration’s ‘botched withdrawal from Afghanistan’; and The Greatest Game, a ‘multi-season, global spy thriller that lays bare China’s plans to replace the United States as the dominant global power’.

Perhaps less excitingly, the studio also wants to make a three-part adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, the long and, many insist, dreary novel by libertarian firebrand Ayn Rand about industrialists rebelling against an overbearing government. 

Billionaire Peter Thiel, a pro-Trump conservative libertarian, is just one of many Right-wing tech barons investors behind a Dallas-based film studio that will focus on make movies evoking a Hollywood era that existed before the industry became in thrall to politically correctness

Billionaire Peter Thiel, a pro-Trump conservative libertarian, is just one of many Right-wing tech barons investors behind a Dallas-based film studio that will focus on make movies evoking a Hollywood era that existed before the industry became in thrall to politically correctness

It has long been a favourite read of many Trump supporters, though less for the plot and writing than its political ideas.

Hollywood has historically been timid about criticising China because of its fear of offending the Communist regime – making a mockery of its claims to be morally high-minded.

The country constitutes the world’s second most lucrative film market, but its government can ban any foreign title that offends it.

And so everything from references to Tibet in the Marvel superhero film Dr Strange to an unflattering shot of tattered underwear hanging from a washing line in Shanghai in Mission: Impossible III have been cravenly removed. 

The 2013 film adaptation of World War Z starring Brad Pitt made changes from the book on which it was based to avoid suggesting that a zombie outbreak started in China.

Founders Films bosses have noted that the Nazis were similarly highly effective in censoring Hollywood in the 1930s by threatening to close down the German market to its films.

Superman star David Corenswet – a fierce Trump critic – highlighted how his planet-saving character is an immigrant (albeit from the planet Krypton rather than Mexico) and sent a rather damning message to Trump’s America about being ‘kinder’ to outsiders

Superman star David Corenswet – a fierce Trump critic – highlighted how his planet-saving character is an immigrant (albeit from the planet Krypton rather than Mexico) and sent a rather damning message to Trump’s America about being ‘kinder’ to outsiders

If a TV series about devious Chinese attempts to undermine the US (a premise, incidentally, more than justified by the facts) doesn’t have Hollywood reaching for the smelling salts, Founders Films’ plans for movies celebrating recent Israeli military ventures will.

They include Roaring Lion, a thriller about this year’s Israeli attacks on Iran which – according to the film’s resumé – will portray Israel as ‘striving for nuclear non-proliferation and exercising its right of self-defence against a crazed regime intent on destroying it’.

One of the new studio’s founders, Shyam Sankar (chief technology officer of Palantir) six months ago outlined the sort of films he wanted to see being made once again.

He harked back to the gung-ho days of the late 1980s and 1990s – ‘I remember growing up as an immigrant kid at the end of the Cold War’ – when audiences flocked to patriotic classics such as Top Gun, Rocky IV, Red Dawn and The Hunt For Red October.

In each case, the plot involved US heroes confronting Soviet baddies and the films, said Sankar, served as a ‘soft power tool that helped lift the Iron Curtain and accelerate the collapse of the Soviet Union’.

The team behind the 2013 film World War Z, starring Brad Pitt, made changes to the movie to avoid suggesting that a zombie outbreak started in China, in order to avoid offending the Beijing government in a country with the world’s second most lucrative film market

The team behind the 2013 film World War Z, starring Brad Pitt, made changes to the movie to avoid suggesting that a zombie outbreak started in China, in order to avoid offending the Beijing government in a country with the world’s second most lucrative film market

And the West, Sankar argued, needed that sort of propaganda even more, now that it faced a ‘Cold War II’ against a foe – China – that’s far more powerful than the Soviet Union.

‘Breaking out of our cultural malaise will require the studios to wake up and choose America,’ he said.

Media analyst Alex DeGroote described Founders Films as a ‘real punch in the face for woke’.

Veteran Hollywood journalist Paul Bond said the industry had left itself open to such a challenge by demonising Right-wingers with ‘Leftist messages . . . where anything smacking of conservatism is portrayed as extremism, racism, xenophobic, homophobic, whatever the flavour of the day is’.

And, in fact, there have been some conservative screen successes of late, including a biopic of Ronald Reagan starring Dennis Quaid that last year grossed $30 million (£22 million) and Am I Racist?, a Borat-style mockumentary lampooning the DEI movement, which became the highest-grossing documentary of 2024.

Last year, a biopic of Republic president Ronald Reagan, starring Dennis Quaid,  grossed £22million and is seen as a conservative screen success by the American Right-wing base

Last year, a biopic of Republic president Ronald Reagan, starring Dennis Quaid,  grossed £22million and is seen as a conservative screen success by the American Right-wing base

Meanwhile, the recent fierce row over a ‘Sydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans’ advertising campaign featuring the winsome actress – in which Left-wingers were widely ridiculed after they complained the jeans advert was racist and eugenicist because Sweeney is blonde and blue-eyed – revealed a large swathe of the US public is sick of being lectured by the wokerati.

It also revealed – to the delight of conservatives including President Trump – that Sweeney is a registered Republican.

However, Hollywood veterans caution that if anything is going to succeed, it has to be entertaining. As with recent overly-woke films like the Snow White remake, movies that seem too much like an ideological lecture – whether liberal or conservative – are likely to flop.

But, even if a three-part Ayn Rand adaptation sounds about as enticing as a Snow White sequel, at least it offers something new and different in a film world that has become as gratingly predictable in its stories as it is in its politics.

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