Titanic Studios in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has secured planning permission for two new film stages. Hit fantasy TV drama Game of Thrones is based at the existing facility and the additional studios will be developed at a cost of GBP14 million.
Historical drama Clavius will film partly on location in Malta with British actors Joseph Fiennes and Tom Felton. Set in the early 1st Century AD, the story follows an agnostic Roman Centurion who sets out to locate the body of Jesus of Nazareth as he looks into rumours of a risen Messiah.
A reboot of action franchise Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has helped boost New York’s production industry with direct spending of more than USD55 million. The new film shot for over 70 days in New York City and spent USD30 million on local crew wages.
The British Film Commission and the government have called for feedback from the production industry on new plans to make filming easier in London and England. Currently, the plans will smooth the process enabling productions to create adapted stage space in retrofitted buildings.
New US series The Quest filmed on location in Austria to find its fantasy setting. The show is a hybrid of fantasy role-play and ‘reality’ drama, and shot mostly at Burg Kreuzenstein, a castle near Vienna.
Location filming in Georgia surpassed the billion-dollar mark in the 2013/14 fiscal year as the state attracted movies like Insurgent and the Hunger Games sequels. Nearly 160 productions filmed locally, spending USD1.4 billion, but the overall economic impact is estimated at five times that figure.
Studio Babelsberg has started work on a new back lot set as part of its existing filming facility in Potsdam, near Berlin. The Neue Berliner Straße – or New Berlin Road – is described as a “modular hybrid set” and is an investment of over EUR12 million that will span some 12,000 square metres.
Television drama pilot Point of Honor will film on location in Virginia in the eastern US. Telling a story of family drama in the 1860s during the American Civil War, the production is the second period piece to come to Virginia in recent years following Revolutionary War spy drama Turn.