You win some, you lose some. Michigan knows, winning a new production company that plans to open a $20 million film studio in Clinton Township (90 minutes northeast of Detroit) while losing a studio in Southfield.
The Clinton Township production company, Vanir Entertainment recently announced plans to break ground this spring on a facility on a 26-acre lot.
Vanir, a full-service, multi-media production company, plans to offer the studio as a rental.
One big attraction of the new studio will be a domed green screen, allowing directors to shoot film 180 degrees on the vertical and a full 360 degrees on the horizontal.
The studio will be built using green technology, a geothermal energy grid, which will lower energy costs.
The planned complex is being developed with the cooperation with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, the Macomb County Film Office, and officials from Clinton Township and Baker College.
In Southfield, the news was somber. Parallax Production Studio, a high tech, full-service company with a specialty in postproduction, appears to have gone out of business, despite having signed a $60 million deal with New Castle Entertainment, of Livonia, Mich.
New Castle had obtained $100 million in funding to produce a slate of movies, of which four, with budgets from $2 to $25 million, had been greenlighted. Parallax’ with New Castle called for it to have handled all of New Castle’s postproduction work for the next three years.
