Twenty-three feature and TV films were shot at least partially in Utah during the fiscal year that ended June 30 -- more than twice as many as in each of the preceding four years. Since mid-2005, casts and crews have been working all over the state, from Salt Lake City and the west desert to Bryce Canyon National Park and Lake Powell.

"It's been nonstop," says Aaron Lee Syrett, director of the Utah Film Commission, who gives much of the credit to Utah's seasoned crews, proximity to Los Angeles and smorgasbord of scenery. "Filmmakers here can find almost any look they want, from alpine forests in the north to deserts in the south. Our production designers are really good at making Utah look like whatever it needs to be. If it's supposed to be the South, they'll throw moss over the trees."

Syrett also credits a new state program that offers financial incentives to filmmakers who shoot in Utah. Launched in 2004, the program gives filmmakers a 10 percent rebate on every dollar spent in the state. It already has helped fund 16 films, including the Disney Channel smash hit "High School Musical."

After a lean period from 2001 through last year, Hollywood has rediscovered Utah's charms. At the same time, the local film industry has blossomed: Instead of migrating to California, Utah filmmakers like Kurt Hale ("Church Ball"), Eric Nelson ("Pirates of the Great Salt Lake") and Ryan Little ("Saints and Soldiers") are choosing to shoot close to home.

For moviemakers in Utah, the past six months have been especially busy. Among the projects shot in the Beehive State this year: "Unaccompanied Minors," a big-budget studio comedy about a group of youngsters trapped at an airport; "The American Pastime," an uplifting drama about baseball at a Japanese-American internment camp during World War II; and "The Last Sin Eater," an inspirational family story by Utah-based filmmaker Michael Landon Jr., son of the late "Little House on the Prairie" actor.

The Utah Film Commission will ask Utah's Legislature next January to sweeten the incentive program, citing figures showing that for every dollar the state spends on attracting moviemakers to Utah, it gets back $15 in lodging, food and other expenditures. Syrett and former Utah film czar Leigh von der Esch believe extra incentive money will help extend Utah's current filmmaking boom.

In the meantime, here are sneak previews of four notable movies that were shot almost completely in Utah over the past 12 months. Look for them in theaters in 2007:

Certain magic on a road trip 'BONNEVILLE'

What do you get when you combine Oscar-winner Jessica Lange, Oscar-winner Kathy Bates and Oscar-nominee Joan Allen?

A great cast, for starters.

That's a key selling point of "Bonneville," a comedy-drama about Arvilla, a widow (Lange) driving her husband's ashes from Pocatello to Santa Barbara with the help of two friends, played by Bates and Allen. Because Arvilla retraces the route she and her late husband traveled on their honeymoon years earlier, the trio's trip acquires an extra resonance.

"It's a story mostly about friendship and community. And celebrating life to the fullest," says Robert May, one of the film's producers. "It's a very personal, poignant story. But it's also a road trip. And funny things happen on road trips."

Such as one character's romance with a trucker, played by Tom Skerritt.

All three female leads are Mormon: Bates' character is a lapsed Mormon who likes to party, while Allen plays a devout churchgoer and Lange's character is somewhere inbetween. The three women have great chemistry onscreen, May says.

Directed by newcomer Christopher Rowley from an original script by Idaho native Daniel Davis, "Bonneville" was shot in two months last fall in and around Salt Lake City, Wendover, Bryce Canyon and Lake Powell. Utah also doubles for Idaho onscreen, although the filmmakers did shoot a few scenes in Southern California.

The movie premieres next month at the Toronto International Film Festival, where producers hope to land a distributor who will book it into theaters.

May says he considered shooting most of the movie in another state but was persuaded to film in Utah because of the state's rebate program - and the fact that most of the script was set in Utah.

"It had more of the landscape that we were interested in," says the producer, whose credits include Sundance hit "The Station Agent." The gorgeous natural backdrops became a key part of the film, he says.

"There was a certain magic being there," May says. "It'd be hard to duplicate our experience anywhere else."

Alienation, disorientation at UVSC 'DARK MATTER'

This independent drama is likely the first film ever shot in Utah because its makers liked the look of Utah Valley State College. But after considering more than 20 locations across North America, director Chen Shi-Zheng settled on the spacious Orem campus because he felt its stark modern architecture and looming mountains would reinforce his story's themes of alienation and disorientation.

Inspired by a true story, "Dark Matter" is the tale of a talented Chinese physics student struggling to succeed at a competitive American university in an unspecified locale. While the lead is filled by young Chinese actor Liu Ye, the movie's biggest star appears in a supporting role. That would be near-perennial Oscar nominee Meryl Streep, widely considered the greatest actress of her generation.

Streep plays a wealthy university patron who takes an interest in the troubled student. A master of languages and accents, she speaks several lines of Chinese dialogue in the movie.

"She was a consummate professional -- very focused," says the film's executive producer, Janet Yang, by telephone from New York. "She knew all the nuances of her character, and everyone else's characters as well."

Rounding out the cast are Aidan Quinn ("Legends of the Fall") as an unsympathetic professor and Blair Brown ("The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd") as his all-knowing assistant.

First-time filmmaker Chen, a former opera singer, shot "Dark Matter" from late May to late June, mostly in Salt Lake City. Locations included the Beehive Tea Room, the McCune Mansion and the Pioneer Village in Heber. Producers hope to premiere the movie at next year's Sundance Film Festival.

Although the film contains culture clashes and violence, the mood among the cast and crew was anything but tense.

"It was a very calm set. There was very little antagonism. It was refreshing," says Yang, who also produced "The Joy Luck Club." "It was nice to be in that clean [Utah] air. I kind of miss it."

Persuasive producers 'WIENERS'

It's the last day of filming the road comedy "Wieners," and most of the crew in a west Salt Lake studio is laughing - even though it's hot, everyone's tired and the air conditioning must be turned off frequently because the noise gets picked up by the microphones.

The 100 or so extras are not laughing.

"I know it looks funny, but there's nothing funny about this moment," an assistant director instructs the extras. They are the "audience" for the movie's finale, in which a college student (Zachary Levi), after driving across the country with two buddies in a hot-dog-mobile, confronts the talk-show host ("Saturday Night Live's" Darrell Hammond) who ruined the student's love life.

Director Mark Steilen runs through several takes, in part to let Hammond try some jokes. Meanwhile, producers Gregory Smith and Susan Johnson relax behind Steilen's video monitors.

The 23-year-old Smith knew about Utah's locations and crews because of his experience as an actor for four seasons on the WB's "Everwood" (whose interior scenes were shot in the same studio where "Wieners" was shot). But first he had to persuade Johnson.

"I told everyone on [the 'Everwood'] crew that Susan was coming and she was a big cheese and had to impress her," Smith says. "Everybody came up and smiled and told a joke and made a good impression."

The producers then had to persuade the studio and the actors. "A couple of [actors] were like, 'What? Utah?' " Smith says. "Some people were skeptical at first."

Kenan Thompson, another "SNL" regular who plays one of Levi's buddies, says he was "pleasantly surprised" by Utah. "It's a nice place, very scenic." Most of the "Wieners" crew worked on "Everwood" and started filming just as the WB announced the TV show's cancellation. Working with the same crew, Smith says, "feels like a really nice curtain call for everybody. . . . A lot of people have come up and said doing this movie reminded them why they were in the film business, because they had so much fun on it."

Champions of Highland 'FOREVER STRONG' Over the past three decades, coach Larry Gelwix has built Salt Lake City's Highland rugby team into a powerhouse, winning 16 national championships. So a fictionalized movie about Highland's success might seem like a bad idea. Aren't sports movies supposed to be about underdogs?

That was the challenge facing the makers of "Forever Strong," an inspirational drama now shooting along the Wasatch Front. The movie is produced by Adam Abel and directed by Ryan Little, the Utah-based team behind the acclaimed World War II drama "Saints and Soldiers."

Screenwriter Dave Pliler skirted this problem by building his script around the real-life story of Patrick Dours, a Seattle-area youth who transferred reluctantly to Highland in 1994 from a rival team - only to face his former teammates later in the championship game.

In the movie Patrick becomes Rick, a troubled teen who is convicted of drunk driving and sentenced to a juvenile detention center in Utah, where he meets a counselor (Sean Astin from "The Lord of the Rings") who gets him a tryout with the Highland team. Under the tutelage of Gelwix, played by Gary Cole (Will Ferrell's dad in "Tallageda Nights"), Rick turns his life around in time to face his old team, which is coached by his disapproving father.

"People may say, 'Well, that's a little far-fetched,' " says Little during a recent break in filming. "And yeah, we take a little creative license here and there. But it's a true story."

The 40-day shoot has taken the cast and crew from Grantsville, where the championship-game scenes were shot before 750 extras, to a Spanish Fork courtroom (doubling for Arizona), where Rick receives his sentence from a stern judge.

Gelwix is a consultant on the film and has supplied more than a dozen of his players as extras. Although rugby is an unfamiliar sport to most Americans, filmmakers hope audiences will connect with the redemptive human story behind the on-field action.

Little had never made a sports movie, so he sought advice from Hollywood scribe Mike Rich, who wrote the Dennis Quaid baseball film "The Rookie."

"He said, 'Make it a people movie. Make it about the characters,' " Little says. "So this movie is about Gelwix's philosophy of teaching boys to be champions not just in rugby but in life."

Contact Brandon Griggs at griggs@sltrib.com or 801-257-8689. Send comments about this story to livingeditor@sltrib.com

Tribune staff writer Sean P. Means contributed to this story.