New Chinese movie Hollywood Adventures has become the largest Chinese-language film to shoot on location in Southern California. The production features three Chinese stars but has a US director and co-stars, and is mostly being crewed by Americans.
Location filming for Angelina Jolie’s World War II biopic Unbroken and Dwayne Johnson’s earthquake drama San Andreas has helped boost Australia’s international production spending by 50% in 2013/14. Altogether, Australia hosted nine foreign features and two foreign TV dramas.
Mandi Dillin has worked on many of the biggest movies of recent years, including Inception, The Dark Knight Rises and now Interstellar for Christopher Nolan. She talks to The Location Guide about US production centres and her hopes for California’s film industry.
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 Quebec Film and Television Council (QFTC) has launched a new website to promote the visual effects industry in the Canadian province. VFX-Montreal.com offers details on 17 separate companies with credits including X-Men: Days of Future Past, Hercules and Iron Man 3.
California has signed into law a boosted filming incentive that will take effect from 2015. Formalising a deal agreed in August, the move increases the state’s annual film fund to USD 330 million for the next five years.
Cape Town Film Studios head Niko Dekker has announced a need for an expansion of the South Africa facility in response to surging international demand. The studio is home to pirate drama series Black Sails and has also hosted Northmen: A Viking Saga and Mad Max: Fury Road.
Part of the Casablanca-Agadir highway has been closed by Morocco’s National Highway Company to accommodate filming for Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible 5. The closure will last until the end of next week and the production is also expected to shoot elsewhere in the country.