Nicole Kidman is filming a new Vogue photo shoot at the iconic Uluru – also referred to as Ayers Rock – in central Australia. Sydney is still the country’s main production hub, but films like San Andreas and Pirates of the Caribbean 5 have shot in Queensland.
The major new Chinese filming facility Wanda Studios Qingdao has made its debut at the AFCI Locations Show. Scheduled to open in mid-2017 in the Shandong Province of eastern China, the studios will be a subsidiary of Dalian Wanda Group and are set to span nearly 500 acres.
China is planning to launch an annual film grant programme worth about USD 163 million for movies that shoot at the Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis. Plans for the USD 8.2 billion studio on China’s east coast were announced by the Wanda Group last year.
The producers of the Netflix political drama House of Cards have been refused permission to film in the UN Security Council chamber in New York. Authorisation was in fact on the verge of being granted, before a last-minute Russian veto.
Nicole Kidman has started filming new Australian-Irish co-production Strangerland on location in and around Sydney. Kidman and Joseph Fiennes star as a couple whose teenage children go missing in the Australian desert and Hugo Weaving is the detective who leads the search.
British comedian and actor Eddie Izzard filmed on location in and around Edinburgh for the BBC’s new factual drama Castles In The Sky. The production tells the story of Scotsman Robert Watson-Watt and his struggle to invent RADAR technology in the build-up to World War II.
The Wanda Group in China has unveiled plans for a major new film studio in Qingdao in the north-east of the country. An investment of about USD8.2 billion is planned to deliver a 10,000-square-metre studio complex and 19 smaller stages, as well as a theme park, hotels and bars.
New musical feature Sunshine on Leith could help boost location filming in Edinburgh. Based on a stage production and featuring music from The Proclaimers, the film tells the story of two soldiers adapting to life back in the Scottish capital after returning from Afghanistan.