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UK in focus


HOW HOLLYWOOD BLOCKBUSTERS LIKE ‘BEETLEJUICE 2’ AND ‘DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE’ WERE
MADE IN THE UK

Sponsored by British Film Commission10 September 2024

   
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Source: Warner Bros

‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’

As a world-leading filming destination, the UK is ready, willing and able to
meet the demands of blockbuster projects shooting within its nations and
regions.

The British Film Commission, working with its extensive UK-wide network, can
help source anything from a non-tidal dock large enough to accommodate a boat
with 200 actors aboard to a London street that can be dressed as a
post-apocalyptic rubble strewn, car crushed wasteland for a weekend — as well,
of course, as providing help and advice on everything from crews to tax credits.

Here are five recent blockbuster projects that have made the most of what the UK
has to offer. 


BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE

UK locations include: Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden; Watford, Princess Helena
College, Hitchin and Chorleywood, Hertfordshire; West Wycombe Estate,
Buckinghamshire

Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which opened with $145m worldwide on
September 4, is a sequel to Burton’s 1988 fantasy horror comedy about a
recently-deceased couple who contact a bio-exorcist to scare away their home’s
new inhabitants. Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara reprise their
roles from the original, and are joined by Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci,
Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe.

Production for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice began on May 10 2023, with all interior
scenes being shot at Warner Bros, Studios, Leavesden. Other locations include
the imposing Princess Helena College — a former boarding school which closed to
students in 2021 — in the Hertfordshire village of Preston, and
Buckinghamshire’s sprawling West Wycombe Estate, which was used for the pivotal
funeral scene.


DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE

Source: Disney

‘Deadpool & Wolverine’

UK locations include: Pinewood Studios; Bovingdon Airfield Studios; Wormsley
Estate and Holkham Beach, Norfolk; Pitstone Hill & Pitstone Quarry,
Buckinghamshire; Ashridge Estate, Hertfordshire

Shawn Levy directs a third outing of the Ryan Reynolds-starring superhero dark
comedy, the first in the franchise since Disney acquired Fox. Deadpool &
Wolverine, which was released in July and has grossed over $1.5bn globally at
the time of writing, sees Reynolds’ Deadpool officially joining the Marvel
Cinematic Universe, uniting with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine to deliver dark
anarchic laughs and action. 

Filming kicked off in the UK in May 2023 initially at Pinewood Studios, Disney’s
long lease studio base; Bovingdon Airfield Studios, a former military air base
in Hertfordshire, also hosted the production. Other locations included Norfolk’s
Holkham Beach, an unspoilt, miles-long stretch of sandy beach bordered by dunes
and a pine forest; Piston Hill and Piston Quarry, the latter a 25-acre site of
social interest in Buckinghamshire which doubled for the film’s dystopian
wasteland The Void.


KRAVEN THE HUNTER

Source: Sony

‘Kraven The Hunter’

UK locations include: Winnersh Studios, Berkshire; Dorking, Surrey

Directed by JC Chandor. Kraven The Hunter, which is due for release by Sony on
December 13, is an origins story starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Spider-Man’s
eventual nemesis alongside Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola and
Russell Crowe.

“When we were first approached by Sony/ Columbia to make Kraven, the UK film
industry was full to bursting with productions both large and small,” says unit
production manager Sam Breckman, an veteran UK producer. “We were fortunate to
be in the right place at the right time to secure stage space at an established
studio, and one of the recently erected temporary spaces.” Kraven’s main unit
began filming in March 2022 for 61 days, spending 12 of those in Winnersh
Studios — a space which the BFC introduced to Sony — while the second unit spent
12 out of 33 days on stages.

Breckman then turned his attention to securing the right locations within a
designated travel time from the production’s stage spaces. Woods throughout the
Home Counties provided “epic locations” that allowed the film to recreate the
numerous Eastern European backdrops that the script required. 

That came with its challenges. When filming a scene supposedly set in a jungle
camp, a helicopter took off next to a tented encampment — and sent furniture and
tents flying everywhere. “No one was hurt and we managed to complete the scene
as the filming focused on the helicopter, and not the tent and its furniture!”
Breckman recalls. The experienced UK crew base was also well used to the
challenges of filming in inclement weather. “We managed, on the whole, to
successfully navigate the downpours with some strategically placed interior
scenes shot on our stages,” Breckman says. “This required a huge effort by our
design, construction and props teams to get our stage sets ready with very
little notice.”


SPEAK NO EVIL

Source: Universal Pictures

‘Speak No Evil’

UK locations include: Gloucester and The Forest Of Dean, Gloucestershire; Devon

Directed by James Watkins, Speak No Evil is a remake of the Danish horror of the
same name and stars James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy. The
Blumhouse-produced film centres on a dream holiday that turns into a living
nightmare when an American couple and their daughter spend the weekend at a
British family’s idyllic country estate. 

The Universal-distributed film shot on location throughout the UK from late May
2023, with sites including a red brick mansion in Chelsea, London; the Malvern
Hills between the cities of Birmingham and Bristol, and a farm in the Forest of
Dean on the border of England and Wales. The production also dispatched a drone
unit on the coast of Devon.

Recalls Jonny Romano, Blumhouse’s SVP of production, “our quirkiest challenge
was warning the neighbours that they didn’t need to call the police or fire
service if they saw a fireball or heard a loud bang coming from the farm!” 


A QUIET PLACE: DAY ONE

Source: Paramount

‘A Quiet Place: Day One’

UK locations include: Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden; Bovingdon Airfield
Studios; London 

A Quiet Place: Day One marks the third instalment in the action-horror
franchise, serving as both a spin-off and prequel. Written and directed by
Michael Sarnoski, based on a story he conceived with the original film’s
writer/director John Krasinski, it stars Lupita Nyong’o as a terminally ill
woman in New York during the early stages of an invasion by bloodthirsty blind
killer aliens with super-hearing. 

The Paramount-distributed film shot almost entirely in the UK using both
locations and studio sets. In London, the production utilised a Greek Orthodox
Church in Bayswater, an East End street, Canary Wharf and a non-tidal dock. 

UK based supervising location manager Ben Bailey and production designer Simon
Bowles arrived on Day One fresh from Apartment 7A, the Paramount+ Rosemary’s
Baby prequel that had required them to make London look like 1960s New York.
“A Quiet Place was New York again, but a very different one,” notes Bailey. 

They created a NYC underground jazz club in a London pub, and dressed a whole
street in the East End with a blue screen at one end. “We got the street Friday
night. We had to prep it, shoot it, and then reinstate it by six o’clock on
Monday morning,” says Bailey. “We made it into an absolute war zone, rubble
everywhere, smashed cars, dust all over. Loads of extras. It was like a military
operation.” 

The production also turned the Clapham Grand venue into a Chinatown theatre, and
a key scene was filmed on a dry-docked boat. The production also took over
Canary Wharf for a weekend, the business district standing in as NY’s Midtown.
Canary Wharf Group film office run by Lesley Johnson, was instrumental to the
filming. “We were the first crew to do a road closure at Canary Wharf,” Bailey
says. “We’ve always got to be mindful about how we facilitate the production,
because we want to go back to these places again and again and again.”


 * FROM BUSINESS RATES TO EUROPE: HOW THE BRITISH FILM COMMISSION IS SUPPORTING
   THE UK INDUSTRY IN 2024



   
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