Actor Don Cheadle is doubling Cincinnati, Ohio, for a period New York in his upcoming film Miles Ahead, based on the life of jazz innovator Miles Davis. The actor, best known recently for his work in Marvel’s Iron Man franchise, will direct the film as well as star.
Filmmaker Gareth Edwards will shoot a spinoff Star Wars movie in the UK. Director JJ Abrams is already at work in London on Star Wars: Episode VII as the first in a new trilogy, but Disney/Lucasfilm is also planning a series of non-trilogy spinoff movies.
Location filming in New York in the first five months of the year has already surpassed production levels for the whole of 2013. Figures from Empire State Development show that New York has already hosted 23 TV pilot shoots, the same figure for the whole of last year.
The pilot for new US drama series Knifeman is filming on location at West London Film Studios in the UK. Tom Hollander will play real-life 18th Century Scottish surgeon John Hunter in a story based on the biography The Knife Man: Blood, Body-Snatching and the Birth of Modern Surgery.
Aaron Paul, star of the hit crime drama Breaking Bad, has opened the refurbished West London Film Studios in Hayes, along with studio owner Frank Khalid. The facility offers 105,000 square feet of studio space, including six stages and office space.
Proposed changes for North Carolina’s filming incentive programme could undermine the state’s filmmaking appeal, production professionals have warned. Governor Pat McCrory has set out plans that could hinder the state’s ability to attract features on the scale of Iron Man 3.
Bryan Singer filmed new superhero sequel X-Men: Days of Future Past on location in Montreal, Canada. Through a time travel storyline, the film unites the X-Men franchise’s original characters, Professor X, Magneto and Wolverine, with their younger incarnations from X-Men: First Class.
Ohio’s filming incentive programme has helped attract a biopic of the jazz innovator Miles Davis to Cincinnati. Iron Man franchise co-star Don Cheadle – also a talented saxophonist – will direct and produce Miles Ahead, and will also star as the famous musician.