Plans to Shoot Three Seconds Have Been Scrapped
Maggie Gyllenhaal | Denis Makarenko / Shutterstock.com
UPDATE [2:29 pm, 8/25/2015]: An earlier version of this story said Three Seconds will shoot in the Pittsburgh area, but that isn’t so, according to Greater Philadelphia Film Office Executive Director Sharon Pinkenson. She emailed to say the project has been completely scrapped and it “will not shoot anywhere.”
ORIGINAL: Philly paparazzo HughE Dillon reports on PhillyChitChat.com that plans to shoot A-list indie flick Three Seconds in Philadelphia have been scrapped.
The film, directed by Otto Bathurst, was set to begin filming in Philadelphia on Sunday. It stars Luke Evans, David Oyelowo, Josh Brolin, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Olivia Munn. According to Dillon, the crew had already opened production offices, scouted locations, and the cast had moved into apartments they would stay in throughout the duration of the shoot. (I actually saw Maggie Gyllenhaal riding through town on her bike one day!)
Dillon says he started to notice plans had changed when he went to Pittsburgh and saw a story calling for Three Seconds extras who could shoot in nearby Greensburg on September 7th and 19th. This Monday, he ran into someone who worked on the film’s production team who verified that it wouldn’t be shooting in Philadelphia. “The production has been closed down and everyone has left town,” Dillon writes.
He went straight to the source to find out why: Greater Philadelphia Film Office Executive Director Sharon Pinkenson told him that the loss came down to budgetary issues.
“We did everything we could [to keep it],” she told him. “But the ultimate effect of the lack of a PA budget agreement for those of us working in the film industry was the loss of 1,200 jobs, counting crew, actors and extras from the Three Seconds production. That’s a lot of people losing their jobs.”
This is the second time in three years we’ve lost a major film production, Dillon points out. Zombie film World War Z, starring Brad Pitt, was supposed to shoot here, but it ended up going to Glasgow.
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