It’s the movie Western New Yorkers have been waiting for - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.
It was just one year ago that the neighbors living near Buffalo’s Kensington Expressway were given a front row seat to movie making magic.
For two weeks in May of 2015, crews shut down the expressway at dusk transforming the bustling expressway into an action packed movie set full of car chases, explosions, and helicopter rides – all of which made quite the impact on the Queen City.
“It was over $9 million of local spending here in western New York,” Tim Clark with the Buffalo Niagara Film Commission told 7 Eyewitness News. “Everything from local hires to hotel rooms to fuel for their trucks and their generators.”
A lot of money, Clark says, was spent in a short amount of time.
Clark says filming for the most part went off without a hitch. He said the city only received two complaints, mainly about parking.
Gary Anthony Williams, who plays the villain Bebop in the new film, says although the closures and detours were a distraction, the pros heavily outweigh the cons for the Queen City.
“At first it’s like come on guys, but at some point it's part of the community now, it’s a thriving part of the community, it brings in money, it brings in jobs.”
Which was exactly what the state wanted when Governor Cuomo expanded the New York state film tax credit by 10 percent.
