Northville’s Green Light Productions spotlights local films, Elmore Leonard adaptation

Green Light Productions is moving a couple of local movies into the starting blocks, beginning with an adaptation of an Elmore Leonard book, Freaky Deaky, this fall.”It’s going to be a Michigan book by a Michigan author filmed in Michigan,” says Keith Simon, CEO of Green Light Productions. “We’re not shooting California in Michigan. We’re shooting Michigan in Michigan.”The downtown Northville-based firm is working on a couple of other productions for later this year and next. This isn’t how the former banker saw the company, now nearly two years old, taking off. It was founded with the idea of connecting local filmmakers to funding sources, with the idea of finding another Kevin Smith, the Michigan-raised director of indie-film cult favorite Clerks.However, that hasn’t happened yet. The pair have gone through nearly 2,000 project pitches and have worked on getting a few of those off the ground, but to no avail as of yet. That hasn’t stopped the seven-person firm from hiring over the last year. While Green Light Productions continues to pursue that business angle, it’s focusing more on production work now. “We’ve worked on funding several small budget films, but we haven’t been able to make anything work,” Simon says.Source: Keith Simon, CEO of Green Light ProductionsWriter: Jon Zemke