Director Gus Van Sant’s latest film, Dead Man’s Wire, which releases wide on January 16, is the latest in a string of film productions that show how Hollywood productions are slowly making their way to the Midwest.
Set in Indianapolis in 1977, the film follows the real-life story of Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård), a real estate developer who takes mortgage lender Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery) hostage, believing Hall and his father are scheming to sell a property out from under him at a profit. Kiritsis wired the muzzle of a sawed-off shotgun to the back of Hall’s head with a “dead man’s wire” (hence the film’s name), which would kill Hall if police tried to shoot and kill Kiritsis. The film dives deep into the specifics of the situation, particularly the response from law enforcement and the media circus that ensued.
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While the film is set in Indianapolis, it was actually shot in Louisville, Kentucky, the hometown of director Gus Van Sant, who many know for films like Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester. The production is just one of many finding their way to the Midwest to take advantage of tax credit incentives.
Kansas City–based actor Michael Ashcraft, who plays Deputy County Prosecutor George Martz in Dead Man’s Wire, has seen the trend’s impacts firsthand. Ashcraft has been working for more than 30 years, but has recently had luck finding work with productions that have been coming to Missouri and beyond.
“Over the years, I’d acted in about a dozen independent films, but this was the biggest movie that I’d ever been a part of,” Ashcraft says.
Ashcraft was hired for the role through the St. Louis agency TalentPlus and found himself in Louisville working on the project in January 2025. While the film also features the likes of Cary Elwes, Colman Domingo, and Al Pacino, many of Ashcraft’s scene partners were locals from Louisville hired to play members of law enforcement.
“Because of the ‘local hire’ rules, if they’re going to pay the tax credits, you have to have a certain amount of local hire,” Ashcraft says.
In Missouri, these incentives manifest as the Show MO Act, which reinstated the Missouri film tax credit incentive program in 2023 and offers a 20 percent tax credit to qualifying productions. Productions can also qualify for additional tax credits by filming at least 50 percent of the production in Missouri, and if at least three departments hire a Missouri resident who is prepared to progress to the next level in a specialized craft or acquire a new skillset.
As a result of this program being reinstated, Ashcraft has found work in recent years on films such as the Hallmark movie Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story and the holiday film A Chrismystery, which was filmed in Savannah, Missouri. Ashcraft, along with many proponents of the Show MO Act, sees these productions slowly making their way to the Midwest as a potential boon for the myriad talented actors and filmworkers who live here.
“There’s a good talent base in the Midwest on both sides of the camera,” Ashcraft says. “It used to be that if you wanted to make it in the movie business, you had to go to Los Angeles or New York. Now, productions are no longer tethered to Los Angeles the way they were even 10 years ago.”
As these productions and others, like the St. Louis–based production Soul on Fire, make their way to the Midwest, it will hopefully paint a brighter future for Ashcraft and other regional talent with Hollywood dreams.
“The opportunity to work in top-notch productions with top talent coming to the Midwest is so exciting,” Ashcraft says. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be sitting in a green room with Colman Domingo and Cary Elwes, working with Gus Van Sant, making a movie not in Los Angeles.”
