“Cadillac High,” a feature film based on the KISS’s 1975 celebratory tour to the city of Cadillac, has received conditional approval for incentives to shoot the movie in Michigan.
And since the movie turned in its application to the Michigan Film Office before last year’s Dec. 31 deadline, incentives to locate filming of “Cadillac High” won’t be subject to the 2012 cap of $25 million budgeted by the state.
“It was a project that we wanted to make sure to do everything possible to keep here in Michigan,” says Michigan Film Office Communication Adviser Michelle Begnoche.
In 1974, the Cadillac High School Vikings, playing KISS albums in the locker room before and after games, won seven straight games and wound up conference co-champs. Word spread to the glitter-rockers of KISS, who visited Cadillac the next year for the most raucous Homecoming weekend on record.
June 27, 1996, Detroit News: “We always planned to turn this planet into Kiss World and Cadillac was the first proof that it was possible,” says guitarist Paul Stanley, who will be playing Friday with his original bandmates — bassist Gene Simmons, guitarist Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss. Simmons agrees. “It’s one thing getting into a band and making some money,” he explains. “It’s another seeing that a band can change people’s lives; that it can instill a better sense of self-esteem in people; that it can help a football team win games.”
According to the Michigan Film Office’s 2011 Annual Report, “Cadillac High” will film in the cities of Cadillac, Pontiac and Detroit. The movie says it will hire 205 Michigan residents and spend just over $27 million dollars to produce the film in the Mitten State; including almost $5.5 million on equipment and material rentals and purchasing, $700,000 on food and just over $534,000 on lodging.
Conditional incentive amounts offered to producer Philip Steuer total $8.2 million, though the Film Office is still waiting on some financial information from the film, says Begnoche. Steuer produced the “Chronicles of Narnia” films and “Oz the Great and Powerful, ” which was shot last year at Raleigh Michigan Studios.
Begnoche said Steuer approached them after the success of shooting “Oz the Great and Powerful” in Michigan. “We’re excited about the film’s great Michigan locations and great story,” she says.