Movies Set In Michigan That WEREN’T Filmed In Michigan

Recently, we covered a whole bunch of movies filmed in Michigan, from Grand Rapids to Detroit to smaller towns you would never expect. You can read about a Bruce Willis movie you've likely never heard of that was filmed in Grand Rapids here, and below you can view over 20 films that were shot in Michigan.

But in the course of researching that list, we came across quite a few movies that were set in Michigan but were not filmed in the state. It's a curious thing to say a story is happening in one location, but everything you're seeing on screen is actually a completely different place.

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Why Movies Film In Alternate Locations

Before we dig into the actual topic, we want to dig into why some productions say they're in one place but film elsewhere. Even as recently as box-office hit Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a superhero synonymous with New York, much of the movie was filmed in Scotland and London. There are a few reasons for this:

Tax Incentives:

Have you ever seen a big peach at the end of a film's credits with the word "Georgia" underneath it? That's because it was filmed there. Many states and countries offer tax incentives to production companies to film there. This lowers the cost of the movie, while also boosting the local economy. Filming a movie can bring a lot of money to a filming area.

READ MORE: These Popular Video Games Are Set in Michigan

For example, when Die Hard 2 had to pivot from filming in Washington to the small town of Alpena, MI, the huge film crews "filled every hotel room" and "exhausted the supply of rental cars". That's a huge boost to local businesses.

20th Century Fox

From 2008 to 2015, Michigan was a player in the movie tax incentive with the Michigan Film and Digital Media Incentive, which gave partial reimbursements to companies that spent over $100,000 filming in the state. This incentive saw movies like Batman v Superman and multiple Transformers movies filmed in Detroit; however, research showed the ROI on the incentive wasn't substantial enough to continue the incentive.

More Convenient

Filming in large cities like New York or Los Angeles can be tricky to film from a logistics standpoint, so it isn't uncommon for other large cities to do some acting as their own. Toronto and Vancouver have become common stand-in cities like Chicago and New York, since they still have the large buildings of these cities while being cheaper to shut down streets.

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But enough of the nerd talk: here are 8 movies that claim to be set in Michigan but were filmed elsewhere.