10-26-07
Hot Summer for Film: Can it continue?
Darknight
After the hottest production summer in recent memory, the fall is predictably cooling off. But industry insiders say that with Chicago on producers’ radar and with the production pressures of a looming strike, winter may not be as dead as usual.
The biggest shoot of the fall so far is The Root of All Evil, also known as Cache, a $5 million thriller that shot here in its entirety Sept. 7-Oct. 20, thanks to local producer Naveen Chathappuran. Sean Bean stars with Mike Starr. Milburn Anderson is directing.
Another substantial indie production is Chicago Overcoat, a reportedly million-dollar crime drama from local Beverly Ridge Pictures directed by Brian Caunter, produced by co-writer John Bosher, and starring Starr, Frank Vincent, Kathrine Narcucci, Robert Z’Dar and Danny Goldring. Chicago Overcoat shoots for a month.
Other indies include Marc Selz’ $250,000 horror pic Satanic Panic, shooting in Northern Illinois since May, and the upcoming Black Friday, the first feature from new local company Chiopolis Entertainment.
The sole confirmed major studio production of the fall is DreamWorks’ thriller Eagle Eye, starring Shia LaBeouf, Rosario Dawson and Michelle Monaghan, which is scheduled to shoot here for three weeks in November.
There are a couple TV pilots in town: Lifetime’s “Family Practice” just wrapped production, and TNT’s crime drama “Leverage” shot through Oct. 22. Bravo’s ongoing reality series “Top Chef” will be here through early November.
The modest fall production season pales in comparison to the sizzling summer we just had.
“For film and TV the summer was spectacular,” said Chicago Film Office director Rich Moskal. That goes for all filming, not just “the 300-pound gorilla of The Dark Knight, which was truly an immense production, in terms of its size, the ambition of its stunts and pyrotechnics, and the profile of the production. It was a blockbuster in every sense and the jobs and revenue it generated were unprecedented.”
Moskal said Warner Bros. is still accounting its local spend but that it was “tens of millions of dollars.”
The Dark Knight hired 350 local crew and 6,000 extras during its production here, which ran the entire period of June through September, plus a week in April.
As far as union performers, “The Dark Night was huge, about 250 people,” said Kit Woods, assistant executive director of AFTRA/SAG Chicago. “The stuntmen who worked on The Dark Knight worked forever. It was a good year. We’re all very happy with how it turned out. You always want more though.”
Mark Hogan, president of IATSE Studio Mechanics Local 476, which represents many crew positions, said the union added about 65 new members to accommodate the rise in demand this summer.
“All the productions were good for local hires,” Hogan said. “We did have a few people come in from England for Batman, because it started production there, and we didn’t have the volume of highly skilled guys that they needed.”
Dark Knight notwithstanding, it was a busy summer for film, with a handful of big studio movies that did some location time, and some mid-range studio pics and substantial indies that shot here in their entirety.
The second biggest impact came from Universal’s mid-size The Express, starring Dennis Quaid in a period sports drama about Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis (Rob Brown), which shot most of its production here between April 6 and June 20.
Wanted, the Hollywood debut of Kazakh director Timur Bekmambetov, starring Angelina Jolie, James McAvoy and Morgan Freeman, shot here for a week in May and three more weeks between July 30 and Sept. 5,
The Lucky Ones (formerly The Return), Neil Burger’s $15 million Lionsgate drama about three returning injured Iraq War vets (Tim Robbins, Rachel McAdams and Michael Pe-a) filmed throughout the suburbs, as well as downstate and St. Louis, through May and June.
Chicago native Charles Carner’s Larry the Cable Guy vehicle Witless Protection, another Lionsgate picture budgeted at $7.5 million, worked in the city and suburbs throughout June.
Also from Lionsgate, Tyler Perry’s Meet The Browns shot here July 15-20. Producer Reuben Cannon is a former Chicagoan. Darren Grant, who directed Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman, did a day of second unit here in September on his new dance drama Make It Happen.
A couple of Chicago-set films shot here for a single day of principal photography: Steppenwolf company member Terry Kinney’s feature directorial debut for Plum Pictures, Diminished Capacity, starring Matthew Broderick, Alan Alda and Virginia Madsen and produced by former Steppenwolf Films head Tim Evans; and New Line’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, adapted from local Audrey Niffenegger’s novel, starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana. Time Traveler’s Wife, which shoots mainly in Canada, will return for a week at the end of November.
Possibly the biggest local summer indie was SPEAK Productions’ $300,000 gay Shakespearean musical Were the World Mine, by Northwestern alumni Thomas Gustafson and Corey James Krueckberg, which shot here in June.
On the TV front, BET’s series “College Hill Interns” was here for a month in July. A couple of series returned for Chicago location work: TBS’ “My Boys” was here June 18-22, and standby “ER” shot a few days in September and may return in November.
Commercials, which last year seemed like the biggest beneficiaries of the Film Tax Credit, have been slow all year, which Moskal attributes to national trends.
“The industry is making fewer TV commercials nationwide every year,” he said. “They’re looking for other avenues to appease clients, be it Internet marketing or direct marketing.”
For the year ahead, the biggest news may be Sony’s blues period drama Cadillac Records, directed by Darnell Martin (Their Eyes Were Watching God), tentatively scheduled to shoot here in March.
George Tillman and Bob Teitel’s State Street Pictures is developing at least three features to shoot here, The Siege of Fulton Avenue, Stefon’s Corner, and Humboldt Park, but all three projects await a green light as Tillman gears up for his next out-of-town directing gig, Notorious, the Biggie Smalls biopic.
As the season cools down, a lot of new and longstanding IATSE members are looking for other work.
“A lot of our skilled workers have other skills; they’re construction people, painters and electricians,” Hogan said. “They can find work in other areas.”
“It makes me nervous to have a great year because of one movie, because if you don’t get that level of movie next year, you have a lousy year,” said Eileen Willenborg, executive director of AFTRA/SAG Chicago and former president of the Illinois Production Alliance. “The state and the city need to support the investor community to increase our soundstage capacity and make Chicago a production center, instead of just a location.”
The IPA continues to lobby for a multiyear extension of the Film Tax Credit, which Willenborg argues is necessary to attract TV series, which bring the greatest potential for consistent jobs. “TV producers need to know that they can rely on a credit to produce a show for five years, so they can get into syndication,” Willenborg said. “We’re working to convince legislators that we need to extend the credit. We need to assure the legislators in turn that we have mechanisms in place to improve diversity.”