Michigan continues to make inroads into the motion picture industry as planned production studios in Detroit and Pontiac are expected to bring more than 5,800 jobs to the state.
The former MGM Grand temporary casino just outside downtown Detroit will be home to the Detroit Center Studios, Michigan Economic Development Corp. spokesman Mike Shore said Tuesday.
About 20 miles northwest of Detroit, Motown Motion Pictures LLC plans to invest about $70 million in a 600,000-square-foot development with nine sound stages in Pontiac.
“It makes us a 12-months-a-year film center,” said Chris Baum, senior vice president of sales and marketing at the Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau and Film Detroit.
“It makes us a legitimate contender — the studios on the ground and best incentives in the country.”
Michigan is one of the most financially attractive states in the nation in which to make movies. Film studios can receive a refundable credit of up to 42% on production expenses in the state.
A state tax credit of $16.9 million over 12 years has been approved for Detroit Center Studios which expects to create 700 jobs. Motown Motion Pictures is expected to bring in more than 5,130 jobs and will get a tax credit of $101 million over 12 years.
“None of these tax credits go to the companies until they meet the terms of the investment and hire people,” Shore said.
The new studios will help keep some existing jobs in a state ravaged by the troubles of U.S. automakers and an unfriendly economy, Baum said.
“It’s about retaining jobs for industries like hotels and restaurants,” he said. “The films that will come to Detroit this year will keep people employed.”
The state’s film office in Lansing has approved 71 scripts. About half are expected to be shot in Michigan this year, Baum said.
Maggie Smith, Star of Stage, Film and “Downton Abbey,” Dies At 89
Maggie Smith, the masterful, scene-stealing actor who won an Oscar for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie" in 1969 and gained new fans in the 21st century as the dowager Countess of Grantham in "Downton Abbey" and Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter films, died Friday. She was 89. Smith's sons, Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens, said in a statement that Smith died early Friday in a London hospital. "She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother," they said in a statement issued through publicist Clair Dobbs. Smith was frequently rated the preeminent British female performer of a generation that included Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench, with a clutch of Academy Award nominations and a shelf full of acting trophies. She remained in demand even in her later years, despite her lament that "when you get into the granny era, you're lucky to get anything." Smith drily summarized her later roles as "a gallery of grotesques," including Professor McGonagall. Asked why she took the role, she quipped: "Harry Potter is my pension." Richard Eyre, who directed Smith in a television production of "Suddenly Last Summer," said she was "intellectually the smartest actress I've ever worked with. You have to get up very, very early in the morning to outwit Maggie Smith." "Jean Brodie," in which she played a dangerously charismatic Edinburgh schoolteacher, brought her the Academy Award for best actress, and the British Academy Film Award (BAFTA) as well in 1969. Smith added a supporting actress Oscar for "California Suite" in 1978, Golden Globes for "California Suite" and "Room with a View," and BAFTAs for lead actress in "A Private Function" in 1984, "A Room with a View" in... Read More