Film crews from Legendary Pictures converged on the railway crossing at Oyster Sto’Lo Road and Highway 1 today to film a scene for the latest Western reincarnation of Godzilla, Japan’s favourite radioactive monster-from-the-deep.
The camera crew shot repeated takes aboard a mock military transport train as it lumbered its way through a crowded railway crossing flanked on either side by crowds of extras posing ostensibly as refugees. On board, cast members dressed in camouflage fatigues guarded the train’s cargo of ballistic missiles.
Classic monster movie material.
Today was day two of filming in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith area. The crew is slated to shoot a total of six days’ worth of footage at Nanaimo, Ladysmith and Shawnigan Lake locations, said Ernie Malik, a freelance publicist representing Godzilla‘s production crew, before they return to the Lower Mainland.
The remainder of the film will be shot in-studio and “at various locations” in Vancouver from now through to “early summer,” Malik added.
Godzilla roars into theatres May 16, 2014.
Godzilla, a joint venture between Warner Bros. Entertainment and Legendary Pictures, stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson of Kick-Ass fame, Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad’s legendary chemist “Heisenberg”), Elizabeth Olsen (younger sister to Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen) and Juliette Binoche, star of Chocolat and the Three Colors trilogy. David Strathairn — Edward R. Murrow from Good Night, and Good Luck— and Ken Watanabe from Inception and The Last Samurai round out the cast listing, Malik said.
Godzilla is director Gareth Edwards’ sophomore feature film, Malik added, falling into the same colossal-creature genre as his freshman 2010 alien-invasion thriller Monster.
Jim Rygiel, a veteran of The Amazing Spiderman and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, will serve as visual effects supervisor for Godzilla, Malik said.
According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), Godzilla’s screenplay was written by Max Borenstein with finishing touches added by Drew Pearce, the writer behind Iron Man 3, and Frank Darabont, writer and director of The Shawshank Redemption.
Godzilla made its big-screen debut in Japan in 1954, serving as an allegorical warning of the dangers posed by nuclear war. According to Wikipedia, the Godzilla franchise now includes 28 films produced by Toho Studios in Japan and a pair of American productions filmed in 1956 and 1998. Edwards’ Godzilla is slated to become the 31st film in the series as it marks its 60th anniversary next year.
Check back for more tomorrow.
