Was it REALLY that expensive to really film in Chicago?

How shall I say this... There might have been other considerations.

The most obvious one is the Chicago weather, which can change very dramaticly in just a few hours. I would guess you have seen footage of the result of these Arctic Blasts this fall and winter...



Then there is what it can take to get something actually *done*.
The prime example of this is how there were decades of successful "tech" shows in many other comparable cities before the very first successful one in Chicago. Remember the mobs? Companies were approached for, shall we say, incentives. They all but ran away screaming!

I was told the first one had people's valuable equipment, *fall off the truck*, never to be seen again. Then, there were the somewhat less serious instances of how shipments of equipment, and even entire display booths, were *lost* somehow/somewhere, until just about the time the expositions ended, when the crates arrived... Some of the *incentives* one would imagine caused that sort of thing to happen to *the competition's* items, or even your own if you hadn't provided incentives.

Dealing with ordinary business is one thing, but adding the other headaches too? Not for a lot of people. Eventually, Chicago realized that sort of thing was not good for the city, or really anyone, and one way or another, things have gotten better.



Also, there have been tax breaks, and even subsidies given to films and TV shows in Canada, and New Zealand was big on that when HERCULES (Kevin Sorbo), and XENA were filming there too. That doesn't make filming in America that expensive, but, it DOES make filming somewhere else LESS expensive. Subtle difference, but absolutely money in the pockets of the studios.

What is "recolonizing"?



"There will be blood. Oh, yes! There will be blood."-Jigsaw; "Saw II"