Create Here: Chattanooga’s First Feature Film and What It Means for the Local Creative Economy

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Dolly, acquired by Shudder for a March 6 theatrical release and starring Seann William Scott, Ethan Suplee, and Fabianne Therese, is the first feature-length film shot entirely in Chattanooga. The production engaged local creative firms including Urban Story Ventures, and hired freelance grips, gaffers, cinematographers, production assistants, and producers from within the community. Locations, lodging, and resources were secured locally, driving down production costs while keeping dollars in the city. Hotels housed cast at no cost. Common House provided memberships for talent. A donated warehouse on Amnicola Highway, a Signal Mountain property for exterior scenes, and a pool house for makeup rounded out the location package.

The result was a leaner, more efficient production than what either Nashville or Los Angeles could have offered, and a meaningful injection of creative economy activity into Chattanooga.

“Coming from the studio system where everything is just so much red tape, it really felt so freeing to shoot somewhere where people wanted you to be here.”

— Bryce McGuire // Director

Hollywood director Bryce McGuire relocated to Chattanooga during the pandemic and used a smaller project, a short film called Every House Is Haunted, to test whether the city could support a real production. What he found was a community that said yes before he finished asking.

“Originally we were going to make the movie in Nashville, and I don’t think we would’ve had nearly the same experience.”

— Rod Blackhurst // Director

When director Rod Blackhurst came on board for Dolly after his acclaimed 2023 thriller Blood for Dust, McGuire and fellow Chattanooga filmmaker Isaiah Smallman pointed him here. Production ran from May through June 2025, with Blackhurst spending seven weeks total in the city.

The economic signals didn’t stop when filming wrapped. Both Seann William Scott and Ethan Suplee were reportedly searching Zillow on set, looking at what it would take to own property here.

This is the kind of creative economy activity Create Here exists to support and sustain. Not by taking credit for what a community already knows how to do, but by continuing to build the infrastructure, relationships, and professional pathways that make Chattanooga a place where this kind of story keeps happening.

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