The third season of HBO’s hit anthology series True Detective kicked off with a bang on Sunday night, and fans of the show who’ve followed the drama as its unraveled crime mysteries in, first, rural Louisiana and then southern California now find themselves in a part of the country that was once mysterious but now is brimming with curiosity: Northwest Arkansas and the Ozark Mountains.
This third season—again created and directed by Nic Pizzolatto, a University of Arkansas MFA alumnus—was filmed exclusively in the region and follows Wayne Hayes, played by Oscar and Golden Globe winner Mahershala Ali, as an Arkansas State Police detective moving through Arkansas cities (Fayetteville, Eureka Springs) and the Ozarks’ hidden caverns and bucolic plateaus as he pieces together a murder.
According to Steve Clark, CEO and president of the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce, more than 500 jobs were created during filming with a payroll over 38 million dollars. He adds that hundreds of locations, homes, businesses, and automobiles were rented over the ten-month period. Though numbers have yet to be finalized, it’s estimated that the overall financial impact of the series on Fayetteville and northwest Arkansas could reach as much as 200 million dollars. “Simply put, it was a blast having the writers, producers, cast and crew of True Detective in town.” Read more about the production at Architectural Digest