Michigan’s film fortunes have drastically changed in almost a year, and not in a good way. Big-budget blockbusters, “The Ides of March” and “Real Steel” that shot in Detroit last year, opened this weekend in theatres across the country, while two low-budget films received the last available film credits for fiscal year 2011.
The Michigan Film Office last Monday approved a $493,719 film tax credit for a movie called “A Dot Com Affair,” which plans to film in Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, production company unknown, and a $498,868 tax credit for a basketball film called “Gametime,” from S3 Productions of Detroit.
Each film’s budget is approximately $1.2 million and they are expected to hire 91 and 59 local residents, respectively.
The state’s fiscal year 2012 began Oct. 1, and new applications for incentives will have to wait until the state legislature gives the Michigan Film Office new incentive guidelines on how to distribute the new $25 million pool for fiscal year 2012.
A bill that proposes new parameters for the state’s incentives, Senate Bill 569, whose primary sponsor is film incentives advocate Sen. Majority Leader Randy Richardville, was referred to the Senate’s Economic Development Committee in July into which it disappeared.
“With everything in Senate Bill 569 subject to change at this stage in the process, we simply do not yet have answers to many of the most basic questions that projects have when they apply for the film incentives,” MFO director Carrie Jones said in a statement.
The MFO has received 78 applications so far this year, of which 20 were approved for tax incentives.
BLOCKBUSTERS A THING OF THE PAST.
Michigan lost its bid for Marvel’s “Iron Man 3” for Walt Disney Pictures, starring Robert Downey Jr. and directed by Shane Black.
While Marvel was looking for incentives of up to $30 million, the state initially offered $13 million and raised it to $20 million. But with lots of provisos in place the studio went with North Carolina’s 25% tax credit.
The last of the big-budget still filming in Michigan is “Oz: The Great and Powerful,” starring James Franco and directed by Sam Raimi for Walt Disney Pictures. It is filming at Raleigh Studios’ $80 million Pontiac Studios.
When “Oz” wraps, so will the studio, sources say.
FESTIVAL BONANZA.
From now through Dec. 11, Michigan will host six film festivals, most of them in West Michigan.
They are Made-in-Michigan Film Festival, Oct. 21-22, with 46 films selected, in Lapeer; “Thriller! Chiller! Film Festival, Oct. 21-23, Grand Rapids; Ferndale Film Festival, Nov. 2-6; Riverside Saginaw Film Festival, Nov. 2-5, Saginaw; Michigan Film Festival, Nov. 11-13, Grand Rapids; The Saugatuck-Douglas Children’s Festival, Nov. 14-22 and the Grand River Pictures Film Festival, Dec. 11.
