Is anyone not filming something in London right now?
Plus Barking's windstorm and the Daily Mail's shitstorm
At the end of last summer the government announced a £500 million insurance fund for the film and television industry. The idea was to provide a leg up by protecting them from any losses incurred by coronavirus.
That policy, plus the fact that there’s a huge production backlog right now, has resulted in two things.
First: there’s a massive shortage of cameras, production equipment and trained crew, because demand is outstripping supply. Second: you can’t turn a corner in London without wandering on to the set of something destined for the big or small screen.
Indy upsets the Nimbys
The production that’s generated the most headlines over the past few weeks is Indiana Jones 5.
Last week it was reported that Harrison Ford and the Lucasfilm production crew had been filming in a house in Hackney, for which the homeowner was paid around £50,000 to go live somewhere else for a week.
Once filming started though, the neighbours complained of going through “24/7 hell.”
Now, we weren’t there, so we can’t be completely sure. But we’d like to think if we were living next to an Indiana Jones film set for a week, then we would consider it a welcome break from lockdown monotony, and not an experience akin to having our fingernails pulled out.
So what upset the Hackney residents so much?
“Locals moaned about crew cordoning off 100 parking spaces, installing 6ft fencing around the set, and lights keeping them awake as filming went on until midnight.
It doesn’t stop there though. Apparently, there were “angry voices and lots of cars driving around.”
Someone in Hackney must have watched Temple of Doom too many times and dug out their Indy voodoo doll, because a few days later Harrison Ford hurt his shoulder while rehearsing a fight scene at Pinewood Studios, and now production has been put on hold for a few weeks.
Where have all the heroes gone?
Well some of them are over at St Paul’s Cathedral, where filming for a new DC movie has been happening. This time London has been standing in for Central City, the home of The Flash. The biggest clue was the massive bus with Wonder Woman’s face on the side. (Makes a nice change from Brian Rose we guess.)
If you want some more images, Big Screen Leaks has some in this tweet. We just hope St Paul’s got some cash for their trouble. They could do with it right now.
The other superhero in London at the moment is Ant-Man, aka the impossibly ageless Paul Rudd. Apparently Rudd recorded a video a couple of weeks ago “to promote a celebrity basketball game,” a game he couldn’t attend in person because he was “in London filming Ant-Man 3.” No blurry, behind-the-scenes pics of this one yet, and we refuse to make any jokes about Ant-Man being too small to photograph.
We know this one isn’t filming right now, but if you went to see Fast & Furious 9 over the weekend you might have seen Dame Helen Mirren as ‘Queenie’, taking a high speed, night-time tour of Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace and other spots immediately recognisable to people who don’t live here.
One of her key scenes was shot in the jewellery store Boodles on New Bond Street. Here’s Helen herself in a video with America’s version of Ross Kemp, Vin Diesel, at the end of that day’s shooting. Dame Helen seems like she was having a great time (and also way less tired than Vin Diesel, who is about 25 years younger than her):
TV crews have been hard at it too
Sandra Oh was at the tSt Pancras Hotel a few days ago filming for the delayed fourth and final instalment of Killing Eve.
While, south of the river, Danny Boyle has been busy recreating the mid-Seventies in Peckham for his upcoming six-part, Sex Pistols miniseries, Pistol (try saying that fast three times in a row).
Netflix has been filming the second series of Bridgerton over at the Old Royal Naval College at the University Of Greenwich (if you want to know all the London locations that featured in series one, here’s a list).
And Stephen Graham has been spotted filming something in Crystal Palace Park. No word yet on what, but we’d put money on it being really good and really disturbing in equal measure.
Before we leave the world of make believe, here’s a ‘London, but not London’ fact.
If you watched the latest series of Master of None and drooled over “the totally dreamy” upstate New York cottage that the two main characters live in, then we have some bad news for you…
… It doesn’t exist. It was built “from scratch on a soundstage in the ExCel centre.”
And the rest
In ‘Sounds like a film, but is actually real’ news: a ‘tornado’ hit Barking over the weekend:
On Saturday around 10,000 protesters took to the streets for the London Trans+ Pride. Apparently the march did stop outside the Royal Academy “to boo and jeer the institution” that apologised to artist Jess de Wahls last week. There’s some great photos of the march over in Stylist.
The mayor has confirmed that work is underway on an update to the Harris review, the report that assesses London’s preparedness for dealing with a terror attack. At a meeting of the London Assembly last week, Sadiq said a “refresh” of the original review was important “at a time when we are due to receive the findings of both the Manchester Arena inquiry and the Fishmonger’s Hall inquest”.
Londoners should not be afraid though, as the e-scooter crackdown continues! Apparently the Met confiscated 507 privately-owned scooters during “proactive patrols” across London’s boroughs last week.
On Sunday, Extinction Rebellion dumped manure outside Northcliffe House, the building that houses the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard. Five of the group were arrested, and another man was later arrested for attempting to empty more manure outside The Telegraph offices in Victoria.
