A Montana city commission temporarily suspended Daily Wire’s production permit for the film “Pawn Shop” after residents and the local food bank objected to the filming’s impact on the community.
Variety reported that production of the Daily Wire film was halted in Livingston, Mont., after a special City Commission meeting on Saturday. Commissioners passed a motion to freeze the permit held by Bonfire Pawn Shop LLC while the city attorney reviews whether to amend, suspend, or revoke it.
The matter is set to return to the commission no later than 5:00 p.m. on October 5. Daily Wire did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Locals had protested the shoot in the days before the halt. City officials and the town’s only food bank cited business disruption, missing notice about hazardous stunts, and barriers for people seeking food. Residents also said the filming left them feeling unsafe.
The Livingston City Commission did not wait for a routine session. It called a special Saturday meeting and moved at once against the permit.
The motion, as reported, was clear and time-bound:
“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 5:00pm on October 5th.”
Bonfire Pawn Shop LLC is the named permit holder. The production is Daily Wire’s film “Pawn Shop,” which Variety described as a pro-ICE project. The opening scene has been reported to include a depiction of a fatal ICE shooting of Renée Good in Minnesota earlier this year.
That subject matter put immigration enforcement on screen in a small Montana city. The commission’s response was a fast permit freeze and a short clock for legal advice.
City Commission member Cindy Daniels framed the dispute as a failure of consideration by the production.
Daniels told the meeting the filmmakers had used local conditions for their own project and left the town without a share of any gain:
“they’ve taken advantage of the situation to make their movie... We’re not profiting off that movie. So they’re not thinking of the veterans that live on K Street. They’re not thinking of the food resource center.”
Her comments put veterans on K Street and the food resource center at the center of the political case for stopping the cameras. The commission then tied the permit’s fate to a city attorney opinion and an October 5 deadline.
The Livingston Food Resource Center is the city’s sole food bank. On Friday it posted an Instagram statement arguing the production’s permit process created new obstacles for people who already struggle to eat.
The center said it received no advance word about the filming plans:
“People who already face numerous obstacles to meeting their most basic needs are now facing additional completely avoidable barriers to accessing food because of how this production was permitted,”
It added a second point on notice:
“We were not notified of the plans to film,”
The same statement said pantry attendance dropped 17% on Tuesday, described as an eight-week low from a normal run of 90 to 100-plus households a day. The center called that result unacceptable.
Those figures and the lack-of-notice claim became part of the public case against continued filming. Officials also pointed to improper notification about hazardous stunts and to residents who said the shoot made them feel unsafe. The record does not detail the specific stunts or name individual safety incidents beyond those characterizations.
Days before the Saturday vote, Livingston residents protested the production. The special meeting and the temporary suspension came after that pressure, after the food bank’s Friday post, and after the reported Tuesday attendance drop.
In sequence, the public fight moved from street protest and pantry complaints into a formal commission motion. The permit is paused, not yet permanently revoked. The city attorney must weigh amend, suspend, or revoke options and bring the issue back by the October 5 afternoon deadline.
What remains unsettled is the final legal call, any detailed account of the stunt-notification rules, and Daily Wire’s fuller response beyond the lack of an immediate comment at the time of the Variety report. The commission has already used its permit power to stop the cameras while that review runs.
A film that puts ICE on the screen should not be an easy target for a weekend permit freeze dressed up as neighborhood management.
