Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy has collected USD 120 million in filming incentive payments from the New Zealand government over the course of a four-year production process. Trilogy closer The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies will be released in cinemas in December.
Actor and filmmaker Kenneth Branagh will film a fourth and final series of English-language Wallander stories for the BBC on location in Sweden, Denmark and South Africa. The BBC’s series is based on the original Swedish novels and TV series.
Boomtown Productions, based in the United Arab Emirates, has filmed across Sri Lanka for a new series of promotional shorts for Sri Lanka Tourism. Designed to boost high-end Arab visits, the films show holidaymakers exploring scenic parts of the country.
A movie adaptation of the Home Guard comedy Dad’s Army will film on location in Yorkshire, north-east England. The region will stand in for the fictional seaside town Walmington-on-Sea, protected by an inept Home Guard division in World War II.
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.
Cut Media headed to Skye in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides to film a new mountain-biking short with rider Danny Macaskill. The Ridge follows Macaskill’s efforts as he cycles across his native isle and scales the Inaccessible Pinnacle on a mountain known as Sgurr Dearg.
New York has been re-imagined as the grittier metropolis of the late 1970s and early 1980s for the Batman TV drama prequel Gotham. The show has filmed on location in the city but makes efforts to drain modern New York of its colour to support the drama’s darker tone.
Tourism organisation Discover Northern Ireland has launched a new web page promoting the local filming locations used in the action drama Dracula Untold. The movie filmed in and around Belfast, and also further west in places like the Giant’s Causeway.