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Monday, July 21, 2025

The Rundown: Luring movie productions to Chicago


Good afternoon! A brand new comedian e book by Chicago artists options Godzilla attacking Soldier Area and the Blue Line. Right here’s what else you must know in the present day.

1. Chicago’s prime movie submit stands vacant as manufacturing season kicks into excessive gear

Some aldermen have stated they need to see movie and tv drum up extra {dollars} for the native economic system. However that decision comes because the movie trade faces some severe challenges, together with Hollywood constricting and fewer content material being made whereas studios consolidate.

Business leaders agree Chicago has an outsized function to play in filling the hole. However the ouster of Jonah Zeiger as the pinnacle of the Chicago Movie Workplace and a wave of employees adjustments on the metropolis’s Division of Cultural Affairs and Particular Occasions underneath new commissioner Clinée Hedspeth means fewer persons are recruiting movie crews and sealing the deal in an trade that’s all about relationships, my colleague Courtney Kueppers studies.

The competitors to lure productions has gotten stiffer. States like Georgia, and worldwide places like Eire and Australia, supply beneficiant incentives.

Final summer season, Gov. JB Pritzker signed an growth of Illinois’s tax credit score to incorporate advantages for nonscripted tv like speak and sport reveals. That was shortly utilized by late-night giants like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart to broadcast from Chicago throughout August’s Democratic Nationwide Conference.

Past recruiting characteristic movies, TV reveals and commercials to shoot in Chicago, town’s Movie Workplace serves because the hub for allowing and logistical help for manufacturing crews whereas they’re on the town. [WBEZ]

2. A graduate saddled with $138,000 in debt for a ‘nugatory’ diploma is suing mortgage servicer Navient for fraud

An Aurora girl who attended a for-profit faculty within the Loop filed a proposed class motion lawsuit on behalf of scholar mortgage debtors who had been shut out of getting their loans discharged following a 2022 settlement towards mortgage servicer Navient Corp, my colleague Stephanie Zimmerman studies for the Chicago Solar-Instances.

Amanda Luciano attended the now-defunct Worldwide Academy of Design and Know-how from 2006 to 2008. She has paid off about $52,000 of the ensuing debt and her lawsuit says Navient ought to have erased her loans as a result of she attended a “predatory for-profit” college. As a substitute, the corporate refused and wouldn’t clarify why.

Profession Schooling Corp., which based IADT, has settled quite a few lawsuits with authorities businesses, together with a 2019 settlement with 49 states that had accused it of misrepresenting prices, transferability of credit and employment prospects.

Navient declined to remark. [Chicago Sun-Times]

3. A former Navy sailor admitted to plotting a 2022 terrorist assault towards Naval Station Nice Lakes

A former sailor pleaded responsible in the present day to plotting an assault on Naval Station Nice Lakes in North Chicago, purportedly to avenge the 2020 demise of Qasem Soleimani, a commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, my colleague Jon Seidel studies for the Chicago Solar-Instances.

Court docket data present that, along with Naval Station Nice Lakes, Xuanyu Harry Pang additionally mentioned an assault on the Cloud Gate sculpture generally often known as “The Bean” and a busy Michigan Avenue bridge.

Pang admitted to conspiring and trying to willfully injure and destroy nationwide protection materials, premises and utilities with an intent to injure, and intrude and impede within the nationwide protection of the US. He faces 20 years in jail. [Chicago Sun-Times]

4. Chicago is including 50 pace cameras to assist steadiness town’s 2025 funds

The plan entails growing the units by 30%, the Chicago Tribune studies.

The Chicago Division of Transportation informed the Tribune the places of the brand new cameras haven’t been decided. A number of aldermen informed the newspaper they had been requested by transportation officers to offer addresses inside their wards that would home the cameras.

Although some Metropolis Council members think about the cameras helpful for income and visitors legislation enforcement, others have issues concerning the tickets going primarily to low-income folks of shade. [Chicago Tribune]

5. What occurs when the millennials take cost of the theater?

Chicago’s inaugural Social Change Theater Competition is one of some showcases of rising writers who’re taking playwriting in a community-centered course, Mike Davis studies for WBEZ.

“Our hope is to create a second round social change via theater,” stated Chicago actor and director Kevin Aoussou, affiliate director of the social justice–targeted Nonetheless Level Theatre Collective. “There’s a neighborhood that’s right here, that cares about one another and cares about our neighbors. We need to create an area for these folks to come back collectively.”

At his inaugural Social Change Theater Competition this weekend on the Athenaeum, the aim is to workshop brand-new performs overlaying large themes, from felony justice reform and local weather change to gender ideology — the latter a spotlight of the Trump administration’s current flurry of govt orders. [WBEZ]

Right here’s what else is occurring

  • President Trump now says 25% tariffs on items from Mexico and Canada will start on March 4. [AP]
  • Right here’s what to know concerning the one-day financial blackout shoppers have deliberate for tomorrow. [USA Today]
  • Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman, spouse Betsy Arakawa and their canine had been lifeless for a while earlier than they had been discovered of their house, a warrant reveals. [AP]
  • A “parade” of all seven planets will transfer throughout the night time sky this week. [NPR]

Oh, and yet one more factor …

Earlier than guitarist Tom Morello grew to become a member of era-defining bands Rage In opposition to the Machine and Audioslave, he portrayed Oberon in suburban Libertyville Excessive College’s manufacturing of A Midsummer Evening’s Dream.

“A few of my preliminary civil disobedience coaching was within the drama membership at Libertyville Excessive College,” Morello informed WBEZ this week.

A brand new undertaking with the Goodman Theatre is asking him again house. Morello is working with Chicago author Zayd Ayers Dohrn on a brand new musical referred to as Revolution(s) that can assist kick off the Goodman’s Centennial 2025–2026 season — making it one among six world premieres.

Morello spoke with WBEZ this week about his swerve into theater and his function as musical director in Again to the Starting, a July heavy steel pageant that will probably be a farewell present for Ozzy Osbourne. You may learn and hearken to highlights from the interview within the hyperlink. [WBEZ]

Inform me one thing good …

What’s one thing that brings you peace when issues are chaotic?

Penny writes:

“It may appear tedious & gradual, however what I do is backyard. Not simply that, however I actually get pleasure from rising from seed. The truth is, I’ve already began over 12,000 native seeds this yr. With so many threats to the environment, it’s my very own non-public little protest towards a few of these damaging insurance policies. Seeds are hope. Hope that I can depart an space higher, extra ecologically sound, hope for the longer term. Hope that another person will probably be impressed to do the identical, or a minimum of give it a strive.

Being current along with your canine, cat, horse or no matter pet you’re keen on is at all times a good suggestion, too!”

Be at liberty to e-mail me, and your response could also be included within the publication this week.



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