This spring, New Line Cinema's "Semi-Pro" spent eight days shooting at the Michigan State Fairgrounds and various locations in Flint, Lockwood said. The movie features Will Ferrell and Andre Benjamin in a comedy set in the 1970s about the fictional Flint Michigan Tropics basketball team. In February, opening scenes for "Jumper," starring Hayden Christensen and Samuel L.
Jackson, were filmed in Ann Arbor and the Downriver area. The Doug Liman movie tells the tale of a teenager with teleporting powers who's on a quest to find the man responsible for the death of his mother. The incentives also attracted a Michigan commercial production company, Process LLC in Grand Rapids.
In June, it filmed part of a spiritual DVD film series called "Nooma" in Grand Rapids and outlying areas. "I have a lot more money to give away," said Lockwood, who expects two more movie crews to come to Michigan later this year. She and others in the state hope the incentives will draw Hollywood dollars to Michigan at a time when it can no longer rely on the auto industry for jobs.
The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that a big-budget film can inject $225,000 into the local economy for each day of filming. The number of movies released last year reached a record 607. Michigan and several other states, such as Texas and Massachusetts, have taken notice, either offering new incentives for filmmakers or sweetening existing ones.
The subsidies have become a necessity for states competing for movie production business. The deals mainly provide tax credits, exemptions and rebates. In Michigan, companies can get up to a 20% refund of their production costs if they spend more than $200,000.
So far, the incentives have sparked more interest in filmmaking in Michigan in the first six months of this year than in all of 2006, when film revenues totaled only $2 million, Lockwood said. But other than a few ads in the Hollywood Reporter, the state hasn't been able to market its deals to Hollywood studios in a big way. Michigan's budget crisis has frozen state spending, including the $500,000 over four years allocated to promote the incentives.
"I haven't been able to sell it as I hoped," Lockwood said. Film revenue in Michigan reached a high of $20 million in 2001, a year that saw the production of "8 Mile," "American Pie 2," "Road to Perdition" and "Super Sucker," Lockwood said. But without any significant incentives, the state hasn't been able to successfully compete for major productions in recent years.
Though Michigan once used to rank in the middle of all states for movie production, it's now in the bottom half, Lockwood said. But with the incentives, the situation could dramatically change. Lockwood anticipates Michigan's film revenue could reach $40 million or $50 million in the next two years thanks to the subsidies.
No place in Michigan benefits more from filmmaking than Detroit, the venue most requested by production companies looking for gritty industrial landscapes like those seen in "Out of Sight," filmed in 1997. The city would like to build a film district, said Al Fields, director of the Detroit Film Office. He envisions a large building with sound stages, offices and studios that would serve as a film incubator for the area.
Executives at the Detroit Metro Convention Visitors Bureau also recognize the potential. In April, the organization sent two staff members to help Lockwood promote Michigan and Detroit at a trade show for production companies in Santa Monica, Calif. Further sales efforts may follow.
While moviemaking can bring in big bucks for hotels and restaurants and create temporary jobs, the movie itself can sometimes spark tourism to a city in ways most ads cannot. For example, hundreds of fans of the 1980 romance "Somewhere in Time," starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, gather at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island during the last weekend of each October to celebrate the film. Despite this kind of benefit, some people don't think states should be providing special deals for movie studios.
"Someone has to pay for that direct subsidy," said Andrew Chamberlain, an economist for Tax Foundation, a research group in Washington, D.C. "There is no such thing as a free lunch.
" To pay for the deals, taxes must either go up or governments need to cut spending, he added. But such arguments aren't likely to sway states like Michigan that are hungry for anything to boost economic development. Producers of "Semi-Pro" estimated they would spend $1.
2 million in Flint and nearby areas, Lockwood said. The film crew for "Jumper" calculated it would buy $685,000 in local products and services. And Process, the producer of the "Nooma" series, said Michigan's new incentives encouraged it to hire as many local people as possible for its 40-member film crew.
The company estimates it will spend just over $200,000, money that in the past might have gone to cities in Illinois and Florida. "It's a substantial incentive, and if all things being equal, you can do it in one of two places, obviously you would do it here," said Brett VanTil, Process' executive producer. With such results, some in the industry are thinking of adding more subsidies.
The Michigan Production Alliance, a trade group for film and video production companies and others, envisions offering tax credits to studios for hiring local sound technicians, script supervisors and other production personnel. "We have the talent pool to make it happen," said Mark Adler, director of the alliance. "There's room to grow.
" This spring, New Line Cinema's "Semi-Pro" spent eight days shooting at the Michigan State Fairgrounds and various locations in Flint, Lockwood said.
News RSS