Michigan is the new Hollywood. According to the Detroit Free Press (via ComingSoon), the state is becoming a hotspot for film shoots. Not only will Wes Craven and the folks involved in Scream 4 call it home for a bit, but so will the cast and crews of four other highly anticipated films.
Dimension Films is going for Ann Arbor and plans to begin shooting Scream 4 mid-June. Meanwhile, DreamWorks will head east to Detroit for Real Steel, the robot-boxing movie starring Hugh Jackman.
Salvation Boulevard, the Pierce Brosnan comedic thriller, will get underway in May and Vamps, Amy Heckerling’s horror comedy starring Alicia Silverstone, Krysten Ritter and Sigourney Weaver, will commence in June. There’s also the new Harold and Kumar movie, which was recently approved for Michigan’s filmmaking incentives, but a start date has yet to be announced.
And that’s not even the last of it. The article also mentions S.W.A.T. Fire Fight, a movie based on the TV series from the 70s as well as Ray Park’s next film, Jinn. There’s also Sucker, a sci-fi piece about a guy who’s half-man and half-insect as well as three to five projects from S3 Entertainment Group, one of which is called Crypto and will be about the days right before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Kathy Mooney of Pound & Mooney Casting based in Madison Heights said, “More and more companies are finding out that they’ve had a real pleasant experience working in Michigan, and that they have the confidence that the film incentive will last.” For the state’s production companies’ sake, hopefully they will. Some say there was an industry lull due to a political debate that threatened to reduce the incentive rate. The cut never happened, but parties are still at war, one side claiming the constant feuding won’t allow the business to grow while the opposition complains that moviemaking is no way to spend money when there’s a deficit of more than a billion dollars. With such a significant amount of productions working in-state this summer, that’s got to be a boost for the former.
By Perri Nemiroff
