Residents of a small city in deep-red Montana have rallied against the production Pawn Shop, an upcoming film from the Daily Wire that sounds like a MAGA fever dream.
The City Commission of Livingston, Montana, unanimously passed a motion to temporarily suspend production on the film, which was slated to shoot in the town through Oct. 10. During a special town hall, residents raised concerns over the movie’s disruption to businesses and to the city’s only food bank, and over neglecting to notify neighbors before shooting dangerous stunts. Livingston’s population was 8,040 residents as of the 2020 census.
The Daily Wire’s Pawn Shop centers around immigration enforcement officers saving the day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, despite evil progressive protesters’ efforts to stop deportations (the liberals team up with MS-13 gang members).
MAGA loyalist Ben Shapiro co-founded The Daily Wire in 2015 with conservative film director Jeremy Boreing and Caleb Robinson. Boreing and Robinson have since left the company in 2025 and 2026, respectively. Shapiro now runs the company with disgraced Jeopardy! host Mike Richards; Richards hosted the popular game show for just nine days before his slew of offensive comments surfaced.
During filming, Livingston residents protested the company’s alleged use of blank gunshots, pyrotechnics, and a staged car wreck—all without properly notifying residents and businesses. Also under fire was the movie’s opening scene, which appears to dramatize ICE’s fatal Jan. shooting of Renée Good in Minnesota.
The film’s stand-in for Good is, according to the leaked script, “MELANIE (40), a fat blue-hair.” In Pawn Shop’s opening sequence, Melanie fatally runs over ICE agent “Juan” with her car while blasting NPR. Then Juan’s ICE partner, “Mike,” shoots her in what the film presents as a justifiable killing, and “Blood SPLATTERS on her PASSENGER’s (40s, female, overweight) forehead and matching covid mask.”
“A motion to immediately temporarily suspend Bonfire Pawn Shop LLC’s permit while seeking legal opinion from the city attorney in a timely manner to amend, suspend or revoke the permit to come back to the commission not after 5:00 pm on October 5th,” the Commission concluded in the meeting.
Locals said the production didn’t properly notify them before shooting a sequence with pyrotechnics in their front yards. Additionally, the production company’s armed security has intimidated residents. According to Deadline, the Livingston police department has received complaints “on a daily basis” from alarmed residents since production began.
“I have been witnessing armed security recording and scoping my home for over a week now from right outside my window,” one resident said at the town hall. “What I am witnessing is not routine traffic control. It is armed, private security in paramilitary-style tactical gear with firearms.”
She continued, “The city is accountable to residents, who are instead treated as obstacles on their own street by armed strangers accountable to nobody in this room.”
The Livingston Food Resource Center also released a statement describing how the production impedes their work and prevents people from accessing their services.
“People who already face numerous obstacles to reaching their most basic needs are now facing additional, completely avoidable barriers to accessing food because of how this production was permitted,” the Center wrote in its statement.
“Since filming began across the street from our building, road closures and armed security guards have increased the barriers to accessing food,” the statement continued. “Our clients deserve to feel unequivocally safe accessing this essential resource.”
Police have disrupted legal protests and even ticketed one protester. Protesting in the street is legal in Livingston as long as protesters keep noise under 65 decibels. Angry residents were singing “Ben Shapiro is a cuck” to the tune of “London Bridges” and shouting details of Good’s fatal shooting at the hands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jonathan Ross.
Pawn Shop is a joint production between The Daily Wire and producer Dallas Sonnier’s Bonfire Films. The companies also teamed up for the “wildly misjudged” action-thriller Run Hide Fight: Infidels, which faced protests from entertainment unions for labor and safety issues.
Sonnier clapped back at protesters, saying, “We are too busy being bad a--es, blowing s--t up, flying helicopters, and killing movie terrorists to concern ourselves with four a--holes with signs on the sidewalk.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to The Daily Wire and Bonfire Entertainment for comment.
