Tribe transforms old casino into studio
A small northern New Mexico Native American tribe has opened a movie studio in a former casino that it hopes will lure big productions.
The Tesuque Pueblo recently converted the building near Santa Fe into a movie studio campus called Camel Rock Studios with more than 25,000 square feet of filming space.
The tribe’s lands feature stunning desert and the iconic Camel Rock formation in the red-brown foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and tribal officials said outdoor filming can take place on 27 square miles of the reservation.
The tribe with about 800 members decided to open the studio after scenes from the Universal Pictures western movie “News of the World” starring Tom Hanks were filmed last year in the Camel Rock Casino, which closed in 2018.
Universal’s use of the casino for filming helped convince tribal officials to transform the empty building into studio space, said Timothy Brown, president and CEO of the Pueblo of Tesuque Development Corporation. Also influencing the decision were investments in New Mexico movie studios by Netflix and NBCUniversal in recent years, said Tunte Vigil, Tesuque Pueblo’s business development associate.
“The Pueblo of Tesuque Development Corporation wants to bring different businesses to the pueblo and the market is really open,” Vigil said. “So this is a good opportunity.”
No productions are happening now and none are planned for the immediate future because the pueblo and most of the state remains under strict COVID-19 business restrictions. But Brown said that that hasn’t stopped potential productions from contacting the pueblo and asking to reserve studio time.
Cheyenne and Arapaho filmmaker Chris Eyre, a Santa Fe resident and an advisor to Camel Rock Studio, said the studio’s unique aspect is that its former makeup as a casino provides the site with pre-made infrastructure that can be used for filming different types of movie scenes
“It’s a museum. It’s an opulent hotel lobby. It’s a capitol building,” said Eyre, who directed the 1998 film “Smoke Signals” about two Coeur d’Alene tribal members who travel from Idaho to Arizona to retrieve the remains of their father after he died alone.