Studio 360: The new movie Oz: The Great and Powerful — directed by Sam Raimi, starring James Franco, and distributed by Disney — comes out next spring. But like Dorothy said, they're not in Kansas anymore; this Oz was shot in Michigan.
Oz was the high-water mark of an ambitious program to convert some of the state's abandoned auto plants to film studios. State taxpayers funded 42% of the filming costs at Michigan Motion Picture Studios in Pontiac, outside Detroit, in the hopes that it and other productions would establish a new industry in the state. But the studio has been largely idle. Michigan’s Republican governor Rick Snyder vowed to cut back the state’s film subsidy program, and Hollywood studios began taking their business elsewhere. Now Michigan’s pension fund, which guaranteed bonds to finance the struggling movie studio, is left holding the bag.
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