Two episodes of National Geographic’s Running Wild with Bear Grylls: The Challenge were filmed in the Laramie Mountains and Pathfinder Canyon. Film Casper, a division of Visit Casper, hosted the filming of both episodes, which seeks to increase tourism as well as film and television production to enhance the state and local economy.
An episode featuring actor Bradley Cooper titled “Bradley Cooper in the Wyoming Basin” was shot in November 2022 in Pathfinder Canyon. The other episode featuring actress Tatiana Maslany titled “Tatiana Maslany in the Laramie Mountains” was filmed in March of this year.
“[The] best way to describe it is like an adventure talk show,” said Kelly Eastes, location liaison for Film Casper. “If you haven't seen Running Wild with Bear Grylls, that's what it's sort of like as he takes a celebrity out, they talk about life while they're climbing and rappelling and all kinds of other adventures.”
Eastes said that the episodes were produced quicker than other shows.
“What's interesting about this production compared to a lot of other productions I've worked on is it usually takes a long time for him to do all the edits and turn it production around. They turn these around very quickly, in my estimation,” he said. “National Geographic and Disney [of which National Geographic is a unit of], maybe they have the budget to turn things around quickly.”
Film Casper also partnered with Peak Rescue and Tracked Outdoors, in addition to local landowners and other partners for the two episodes.
In addition to National Geographic episodes, other projects have also been filmed in central Wyoming thanks to the lobbying of Film Casper.
“We've done a lot of historical documentary kind of videos that show in museums and across the country about the Oregon Trail [and] things along those lines. We did a commercial with Ridley Scott up on the Red Wall south of Buffalo and around Kaycee and that was a television commercial for Europe. We've done a variety of things,” Eastes said.
Film Casper receives requests from the film industry to film the area, which Eastes responds to help out the production that’s seeking to film in the region. For the National Geographic episodes, Eastes and the show’s producers were in contact about what filming in the area could offer them.
The National Geographic shows filmed for about four days in total, spending between $160,000 and $165,000 in the local economy. These expenses included lodging, rental car expenses, food, and hiring local residents to act as production assistants. Film Casper is working on securing more productions to film in the area. It is also working with several independent productions about possibly shooting in Wyoming.
“What's great about this Bear Grylls show is it's showing all over the globe currently and advertising Wyoming,” Eastes said. “They came in here, dropped money, hired our services, hired people for crew, hired rentals, equipment and things like that. And now they're out advertising our state, and advertising great looking places around our state, and we don't pay a dime for any of that advertisement. We just get it from a production.”
But despite the economic benefits that productions add to the local economy, Eastes said there needs to be a way to ensure Wyoming is competitive for film and television production with other states.
“Two years ago, we scouted numerous times for1883, [a TV miniseries prequel to the Yellowstone TV series starring] Taylor Sheridan,” he said. “What's killed us in that arena is we've lost them to Montana because Montana has an incentive and our legislature hasn't approved our incentive program yet,” he said. "We're not competitive with the other states, like tax credit type incentives.”
The episode starring Cooper premiered on July 9 while the episode featuring Maslany is set to air August 27.
