Bumblebee Movie Scores $22 Million Credit

The LA Times is reporting that Transformers' Bumblebee movie scored a $22 million credit to film the entire movie in California. While the budget for the Bumblebee movie is currently unknown, its supposed to be "significantly" less then the Bay films (which avg. ~$200 million each) so my guess is around $120M or less. This kind of credit goes towards the cost of the film but not its reported "cost". So if the final budget is reported at say $100M then its true cost would be $78 based on this credit. Also keep in mind this is a tax credit, not a cut. A cut basically says "while you don't have to, here is X dollars back, pretty please with a cherry on top spend this money." A credit says "you must spend Y dollars here and we will give you back X dollars back." So its in Paramount's interest to maximize that money buy spending whatever minimum they committed to in California so if hear about them filming elsewhere be suspicious.

This credit should also have relieve some of the stress that the Bumblebee film will have to succeed after the perceived commercial "failure" of Transformers: The Dark Knight. While TF5's half billion take is great, Paramount was shooting for $1 billion and so it failed to meet expectations. On the other hand, that same take from the Bumblebee movie would probably be considered outstanding by the group of executives as their expectations for this film (due to its production costs) has been adjusted much lower. From a pure numbers perspective it doesn't make any sense but expectations about dollar amounts is basically how Wall Street runs as does Hollywood.