Henry Thomas starring in ‘The Last Ride’. Shooting on Hank Williams final days film underway in Benton, Arkansas

The news is out that filming of a biographic movie of Hank Williams’ final days is underway in Benton Arkansas. The movie is directed by well-known TV and film director Harry Thomason. His wife Linda Bloodworth- Thomason is also a prominent figure in Hollywood.Their credits include Designing Women and Evening Shade on TV.  The movie is tentatively called ‘The Last Ride’.

You may recall that I wrote about this project earlier and a commenter on that post explained to us that shots of a vintage 1951 Cadillac were being taken in the Oak Hill West Virginia area. Thomason was involved in the West Virginia shoots although there are different producers mentioned for the two projects. Jeff Queen from Alabama  was the first producer, but this film is being co produced by Tim Jackson and Josh Miller of Category One Entertainment in central Arkansas. They  are both  Arkansas natives as is Thomason. The movie is being produced under a new Arkansas film production incentive program.

I have also written on plans for a full scale Hollywood style biography  of Hank Williams, but I  haven’t seen any recent news on that one. You would have to expect that there couldn’t possibly be three new films on Hank’s life.

The production company has transformed downtown Benton, changing store fronts, and signs and bringing in a fleet of local vintage automobiles. The Benton Courier newspaper has a good write-up and picture here.

Henry Thomas played Eliot in ET many years ago, Here’s a picture of him as he looks now beside a picture of Hank.

Here are links to my previous posts.

The major motion picture announcement.

Here’s the link to the earlier ‘Last Ride’ post based on the announcement of a film by an Alabama company.

This post also contains a lengthy comments section with a video from Jake Penrod, and a post and link to the Harriman Tennessee Princess Theatre project which was involved in the vintage auto filming  which took place around Oak Hill West Virginia.