Michigan’s pool of skilled and unskilled labor along with the state’s attractive tax incentives for moviemakers have helped lure a $146 million film and television production complex to the Detroit area.
That’s very good news for the region, which has one of the country’s highest unemployment rates.
The complex will be built on 105 acres (42 hectares) in Allen Park, just outside Detroit, officials said at a Tuesday afternoon news conference.
Its eight sound stages will be housed in a 750,000-square-foot (69,677-square-meter) production and post-production facility. Equipment rentals, sound and music recording facilities and animation design also will be housed in the facility.
Allen Park beat out a location in Louisiana for the complex, said Unity Studios Inc. President Jimmy Lifton, a former Detroit area native.
Groundbreaking is expected to take place within 60 days with the studio going operational in October, Lifton told reporters, union members and Allen Park residents in city council chambers.
Michigan has been drawing more moviemakers since the tax incentives went into effect last year. The refundable movie tax credit of up to 42 percent on production expenses in the state is the most lucrative in the country.
Officials in February announced planned production studios in Detroit and Pontiac that are expected to bring thousands of jobs
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More