Hangar42 Studios is officially open for business.
At nearly 500,000 square feet, the new Hangar42 is the largest film production facility in the state and could be a boom for the state's film industry. Owned by a group of Michigan investors, who invested $45 million to buy and renovate the former Lear Corp auto plant in NW Grand Rapids, Hangar42 will house the world's largest sound stage, production studios, office space and post-production studios. Over the next three years, the new studio expects to create more than 1000 jobs in the film and production industry.
While the studio officially opens today, the studio has been used already, including filming of "The Gun" starring Val Kilmer and rapper 50 Cent. That film shoot employed about 200 people, including many locals. The studio's owners are in talks with several major film studios and producers about future projects.
The owners have hired a San Francisco-based Studio O + A to design the interior space with the goal of creating more than 50,000-square-feet of production offices. The SF firm also designed unique office spaces for companies like Facebook, eBay, PayPal, Williams Sonoma and Levi Strauss & Co.
The studio is the first to take advantage of the infrastructure tax credit Michigan Film Credit, which will give the studio an estimated $10 million tax credit, according to a studio spokesperson. Since the state passed the film tax credit in 2008, more than 80 major productions have been filmed around the Mitten State.
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