The 2008 drama Gran Torino, which starred and was directed by Clint Eastwood, was one of the first films lured by Michigan incentives to use the streets and neighborhoods of Detroit as a setting and a character.
A film crew making a TV commercial in Traverse City (courtesy of the Michigan Film Industry Association)
By Craig Manning What state is at the epicenter of American moviemaking? If you answered “California,” you might be surprised. While California’s status as the home of Hollywood has made it the de facto filmmaking capital of the world for generations, the Golden State has been outpaced in recent years—or at least given a run for its money—by states like Georgia, New Mexico, and Louisiana. Those three states took the top three slots on a 2020 ranking of the “top locations for motion picture and TV production” from Business Facilities, a magazine that helps businesses with site selection. California and New York settled for fourth and fifth, respectively. How, you might ask, did three seemingly random states leapfrog their way to the top of the film production food chain? Ask anyone in the entertainment industry and you’ll probably hear the same answer: robust film incentives. Once upon a time, Michigan had a robust film incentive program of its own. Adopted by the administration of thengovernor Jennifer Granholm as a means of helping the state recover from the late2000s financial crisis, Michigan’s film incentive program took off in 2008 and, at its peak, generated nearly $300 million of film production spending in the state. In 2015, though, Granholm’s successor, Rick Snyder, signed a bill that killed the program, effectively crossing Michigan off Hollywood’s list of potential production destinations. Now, legislators in the State Senate and House of Representatives are pushing to bring film incentives back to the Mitten State. Will their efforts put Michigan back in Hollywood’s good graces? Or will politics keep the state from getting its close-up?
Michigan’s film incentive program took off in 2008 and, at its peak, generated nearly $300 million of film production spending in the state.
approved and only $57.8 million in production expenditure. Then, in 2013, the program got a boost when Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville successfully advocated to have the incentive cap doubled from $25 million to $50 million—a move that helped bring major films like Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, Transformers: Age of Extinction, and Need for Speed to Michigan. In 2015, Snyder signed a bill that officially ended film incentives in Michigan. That legislation did set aside $25 million to sunset the incentive program during the 2016 fiscal year. But instead of drawing new projects to the state, the money was earmarked for either paying out incentives that had already been approved in previous years or dealing with the disastrous collapse of the statesubsidized Raleigh Michigan Studios.
saw a major turning point in the form of incoming governor Rick Snyder. Where the film incentive program up to that point had been uncapped—meaning there was no limit on the amount of incentives Michigan could pay out in any given year—the Synder administration placed a $25 million annual cap on the program. The change had a swift impact. Carryover projects from previous years—such as the gargantuan $200 million Disney blockbuster Oz the Great and Powerful, directed by Michigan native Sam Raimi— meant there was still a significant amount of film production happening in 2011, including $201.9 million in spending. But the number of new project approvals dropped from 66 to 24, and Michigan lost out on some big Hollywood projects as a result—most notably, Marvel’s The Avengers. It was a series of ups and downs for Michigan film incentives after that. 2012 was a slow year, with just 13 new projects
Show Me The Money: An $80 Million Debacle Based in Pontiac, inside the old General Motors Centerpoint truck complex, Raleigh Michigan Studios was, for a time, Michigan’s largest film production studio. Oz the Great and Powerful, for instance, was a Raleigh production. Viewed as a way to lead Michigan’s bid for relevancy in the film industry, the studio was able to clear its hefty $80 million in startup costs thanks to subsidies from state and local governments. The city of Pontiac waived property taxes for the Raleigh site and issued $18 million in municipal bonds, which the Granholm administration backed by using the state retirement system as collateral. Despite a promising start with Oz, Raleigh Michigan Studios got hit hard by Snyder’s rollback of the film incentive program in 2011 and defaulted on a $630,000 bond payment the following year. The state was left to cover that payment— and other future defaults—out of its pension fund. Ultimately, Michigan cleared the debt in 2016, using $19 million of the final round
Transformers, and Avengers, and George Clooney, Oh My! A Brief History of Michigan Film Incentives According to the Detroit Free Press, just two major films were produced in Michigan in 2007, bringing approximately $2 million in film production spending to the state. A year later, those figures shot off the charts. In 2008, Governor Granholm approved an incentive program that Traverse City
filmmaker Bill Latka says was “the largest film incentive in the country” at the time. “It was basically Granholm’s attempt to get some new activity going here in Michigan, because nobody was making cars [during the financial crisis]. So they created a 42 percent cashback incentive, where if you spent $1 million [on a film production], you’d get $420,000 back. And it instantly brought you-would-not-believe-how-much work to Michigan.” Per the Free Press, the Michigan Film Office approved 71 applications in 2008 alone, generating $125 million of in-state film production spending and creating 2,763 Michigan jobs. Noteworthy film projects included Clint Eastwood’s Detroit-set Gran Torino and Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, Whip It. The ensuing years built upon 2008’s success. In 2010, Michigan had 66 approved film projects underway, generating $293.4
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million in film production spending and creating 5,310 film production jobs. From the locales of Ann Arbor, which appeared in both the horror sequel Scream 4 and the George Clooney-directed political thriller The Ides of March, to the Detroit-heavy shoots of action films like Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Real Steel, Michiganders had lots of opportunities to spot their state on the big screen. After 2010, though, the film incentive
