Film company plans to redevelop former Missoula sawmill into a studio

While the announcement of a film studio moving into a shuttered wood product plant in Missoula’s Northside neighborhood may seem abrupt, local economic officials said it is a step forward for Montana’s quietly growing film industry. 

Story House, Inc., held a ribbon-cutting event last Friday at the former Roseburg Wood Products plant, which it plans to transform into a film and television production campus. The 47-acre site will include five soundstages, post-production suites, commercial workshops and a backlot of an Americana streetscape built over five to six years. 

Once fully developed, the Studios at Story House Montana is expected to create 435 full-time jobs, according to the company. Story House plans to prioritize hiring veterans, Native Americans and displaced lumber and energy workers. About 85% of the jobs on a film production are blue-collar jobs, including electricians, carpenters and riggers, and the company plans to hire those locally. 

Sean Higgins, Story House co-founder and CEO, said the company wants to help build a more resilient economic sector for Montana.  

“We’re interested in real stories and real Montanans telling real stories, and making this industry work for the state for the first time ever, really,” Higgins told Montana Free Press. “Rather than it being an extractive industry, we’re looking to turn that narrative into a cultivated and export industry so that we as a state and as a people control that, and that those profits come back to this bottom line in the state of Montana.” 

About one year ago, Roseburg Wood Products closed its Missoula particleboard plant, affecting about 150 employees. The closure was one of the most recent in a long line of sawmill closures in western Montana over the last few decades. 

Grant Kier, CEO of the Missoula Economic Partnership, said while the community lost many stable, well-paying jobs in the closure, the jobs Story House aims to create will ideally affect the local economy in the same way. 

“Although these industries sound really different, wood products manufacturing versus media arts manufacturing, from our perspective, they land in a similar sweet spot for the niche we’re trying to fill for our economy,” he said. 

The studio facility will provide an anchor for Montana’s growing film industry and provide “substantially different” economic benefits than what the state has seen from large productions like the television show “Yellowstone,” Kier said. 

“What this facility helped catalyze is a movement of the industry across the state to refocus the state’s investment in this industry through tax credit in a way that truly benefits Montana communities, Montana companies and Montana filmmakers,” he said. “Because of that, products that get made here will be sold in other places and generate revenue that comes back to the state and stays in the community forever; rather than us investing in production companies that spend months here and take that investment back to another state or community and that money never returns.” 

The story of how a film studio ended up in Missoula starts about seven years ago in Sheridan, Wyoming. 

Higgins said when he and Story House co-founder James Brown III were working on a film together in Sheridan, they learned about the local need for housing and services for veterans and the greater need for housing throughout the region. 

In 2020, the two formed Story House, Inc., a real estate-backed film production company. Soon after, the company began planning Story House Village, a 240-acre housing and commercial development in Sheridan that includes homes for unhoused veterans. Higgins said Story House explored building a film studio there but turned its focus to Montana when that didn’t work out. 

Support from the Montana Department of Commerce and the Missoula Economic Partnership and Missoula’s vibrant arts sector led Story House to the Roseburg site, Higgins said. 

“That community response to this opportunity is what made us choose Missoula, but I’d like to think that Missoula chose us as much as anything,” he said. “That’s what’s felt really lovely about this experience is the state understands the economics of this opportunity from a manufacturing standpoint; Missoula understands it from both a manufacturing standpoint but also the heartbeat of what this could be and what it could mean and how it fits in a greater ecosystem of economics for Missoula.” 

When Missoula Economic Partnership first heard of Story House’s interest in Missoula, Kier said he hoped laid-off Roseburg workers could be employed at a new facility right away. However, the timing was never going to be “that storybook ending,” he said. 

“But we really did see a good match for the pace at which Story House wanted to come into the community and grow, the skills they were looking for and … the arts and culture history of Missoula,” Kier said. 

Story House’s first phase of site redevelopment will include renovating buildings into five soundstages over 12 to 18 months. That work will cost about $24 million to $27 million, depending on the cost of lumber and the effects of tariffs, Higgins said. 

Future phases will include 60,000 square feet of production offices, workshops, the streetscape backlot and a green screen with working trains, said Brown, the Story House co-founder and chief creative officer. 

“But more importantly, it’s a space for Montana film businesses to find their home where we can truly create a new film village,” he said during the ribbon-cutting. 

At the same time, the company will ramp up production in Missoula and elsewhere, Higgins said. Story House, Inc. includes an in-house production company, which controls 18 TV and film intellectual properties that it can greenlight, essentially creating a pipeline of projects for the Missoula studios, he said. 

Story House is committed to producing at least one film in Missoula, for which it will hire locally and provide career training on that project, Higgins said. Other projects at the Missoula studios are likely on hold until more film tax credits are available from the state, he said. 

One project will support about 120 jobs. Higgins said he hopes to hire Montanans who have retrained for the industry and those who already have filmmaking skills. Story House wants to work with the University of Montana, Montana State University, Missoula College and local high school career and technical education programs to provide job-training opportunities for students, Higgins said. 

“How can we start to imagine this where that training exists so that those folks can stay in Montana rather than getting on the first plane out after graduation,” he said. 

Story House’s goal is to have three to four projects shooting in Missoula simultaneously; the only thing inhibiting that right now is the size of the state’s film tax credit program, Higgins said. 

In 2019, the Montana Legislature passed the Montana Economic Development Industry Advancement (MEDIA) Act, which provided $12 million annually in income tax incentives for film, television and other media productions. The incentives were set to expire in 2029. 

Last week, Gov. Greg Gianforte signed Senate Bill 326, which extended the tax credit program through 2045, increased the credit for employing Montana veterans and tribal members, and set aside a certain amount of credits for small operations and Montana filmmakers. 

Higgins said the bill’s provisions that prioritize Montana businesses were “a huge win,” but the initial proposal to increase the annual tax credit cap to $30 million was reduced to the current cap of $12 million. 

Most of the available film credits are reserved through 2029, said bill sponsor Sen. Greg Hertz, R-Polson, during a Senate committee meeting in March. While the incentive program has been successful in bringing in productions, Montana has begun losing projects to other states, he said. 

Higgins, who advocated for the bill along with the Montana Media Coalition, said he hopes the credit can be increased in the future. 

“We hope to bring the state along in that thinking that this is a viable sector that more than pays for itself,” he said. “So as we invest what is up front at-risk private equity dollars, we are hoping that helps inspire what ends up being a very small rebate tax credit program on a percentage basis.” 

Lynn-Wood Fields, executive director of the Montana Media Coalition, said the new bill makes the tax credit program more beneficial for Montana filmmakers instead of large productions. The coalition represents about 200 Montana filmmakers, businesses and supporters of the state’s media industry. 

“These are hard-working, blue-collar jobs that we are proud of doing, but that big productions didn’t always hire locally,” she said. “This, in turn, created housing issues by bringing in crew.” 

The coalition is excited that Story House plans to hire locally first, Fields said. 

“We have a wage issue in Montana, and higher wages mean more of us can stay, buy homes and raise our families here,” she said. “This is the opposite of what has been happening, and it is important that those of us living here play a part in the stories being told here.” 

The average film industry wage in Montana was $86,666 in 2022, compared to the overall private sector average of $54,232, according to a 2024 analysis of the film tax credit program.

Kier, with the Missoula Economic Partnership, said the organization keeps in mind the community’s top challenge of housing availability and affordability while recruiting businesses. 

“We take seriously the responsibility of trying to grow jobs at a pace that we can also grow our housing inventory so we’re not creating imbalances in the economy that lead to further escalation of housing prices or really big challenges on workforce availability,” he said. 

It’s rare for a community of Missoula’s size to see a new employer provide 100 or more jobs, but the area is not well-equipped to handle more than that at once, Kier said. Story House’s plan for growth over several years should feel organic and reflect the ability to develop talent in the community, he said. 

Story House hopes to participate in the housing conversation in Missoula and potentially be involved in a housing development on the surrounding Roseburg property if that aligns with the city’s plans, Higgins said. 

“We think it’s the socially responsible thing to do if we’re going to go out and over the next six years create 400 or more jobs,” he said. 

Higgins said Montana had more of an existing film industry than he expected, in part because of the Montana Media Coalition and Paramount’s filming of “Yellowstone” and “1923” in the state. However, many students studying film are still leaving the state, and Story House hopes to bring more of those opportunities to Montana, he said. 

Over the last decade, Montana’s film production ecosystem has grown considerably through the MEDIA Act and the resources of the state’s film office, according to the tax credit program study. 

From 2010 to 2019, the state saw an average of 80 productions each year, generating revenue between $2.7 and $7.8 million annually, according to a similar study completed in 2020. The tax credit program began in July 2019, and the state saw 117 productions with a total economic impact of $47.6 million from January 2019 to June 2020. 

From July 2022 through mid-May 2024, 167 productions filmed in the state, spending $334 million and generating $22.2 million in tax revenue, according to the 2024 report. In Montana, the number of workers in the film industry increased from 280 in 2019 to 431 in 2022, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Kier with the Missoula Economic Partnership said the updated tax credit program and the Story House studio offer a turning point for the film industry to become more prominent in “its own Montana way,” rather than the perception of it rising and falling with one major production. 

“This is a place where young people are excited to be, to build toward a future, but it’s a place that’s harder than ever for young people to be because it’s so expensive,” Kier said. “It’s important Montana is celebrating and supporting those industries that have younger workers so they continue to be excited to live, work and play in Montana and invest their lives into this place so it continues to be a thriving place for everyone to live in the future.”