Last summer, Governor Rick Snyder announced that Michigan would no longer offer film incentives. Since then very few big box office hits have found their way to the mitten. But last week the Michigan Film Office announced that Paramount Pictures would film Transformers 5 in Detroit.
So how does a state without any incentives land one of the most popular movie franchises? At least in this case, Michigan didn't do it without incentives.
“Yes the incentive program did go away in July. However, any project that we had that had a fully executed agreement prior to that we still have to honor,” says Jenell Leonard, commissioner of what’s now called the Michigan Film & Digital Media Office.
“Paramount had multiple applications with us that we had already pre-approved prior to the end of the incentive program. So what they did is Paramount came to us earlier this year with a request to amend some of their current projects so that it could reflect the Transformers 5 production.”
Basically, the film office just consolidated Paramount’s incentive agreements, erased the old film project names and added the Transformers 5 name to it. Leonard says, in the end, changing the agreement saved the state $21 million. Paramount realized it only needed half the money from the original incentives, so Leonard says the rest went back into the state’s general fund.
Since Paramount doesn’t have to worry about securing the money, Leonard says they can start working on Transformers 5 right away. She says the movie will be a big boost for Michigan’s economy. The film is expected to spend about $80 million in the state and hire roughly 450 Michigan residents - not including about 700 extras.
Leonard says it’s a great compromise, but the likelihood of something like this happening again is slim.
“I mean this is a very unique case whereby the production company approached us two fold - one was to amend the agreement, that’s one part of it - but the other part of it was the significant savings to the state. So I don’t foresee there being other production companies that could yield that kind of…the financial discussion on the taxpayer dollars. But every situation is a case-by-case analysis and anything that came through we would definitely review.”
So will we have another box office hit filmed in Michigan, who knows? But one thing’s for sure, the Michigan Film Office has found some creative ways to lure film and TV companies to the state. Take the Comedy Central show Detroiters, for example.
“Many people think that just because it’s called Detroiters, they need to be filming in Detroit - and that’s not necessarily the case. Understanding technology and graphics and just the creativity of the film industry - they can film anywhere and make any location look like any place. So actually having it film in Detroit was critical for us. So responded to them and said listen we don’t have incentives that we can offer. However, what we will do is engage local public and private partners to come to the table and still make the business deal as to why you need to come.”
And it worked. Leonard didn’t go into details - but she did say that the City of Detroit, Detroit’s police and fire departments, and some private parties came together to offset some of the costs of filming in the city.
Both Detroiters and Transformers 5 will be shooting in the Detroit area this summer.
