Reopening Hollywood North
Update: Hypnotic ended up filming in Austin, Texas.
Robert Rodriguez’s thriller Hypnotic with Ben Affleck is moving from the U.S. to Vancouver for a Fall Shoot.
Working title: Houseboat.
Target start date: October 26th.
A grounded cop thriller with sci-fi elements, follows a detective who becomes entangled in a mystery involving his missing daughter and a secret government program, while investigating a string of impossible high-end heists.
Cast: Ben Affleck.
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Producers: Jeff Robinov, Guy Danella, John Graham, Mark Gill.
Why the move to Hollywood North?
Filming of Hypnotic was supposed to start last April in Los Angeles but the spread of the coronavirus shut down production worldwide in mid-March.
When filming slowly started up again, rising cases of Covid-19 in California had Rodriguez and producers looking elsewhere. Rodriguez considered shooting in his hometown of Austin, Texas, but the situation wasn’t much different there.
Most places in the U.S. don’t have widely available testing and what there is doesn’t have fast enough turnaround to screen a hundred or more cast and crew for the virus before going to set.
If it goes through, Ben Affleck will be doing the Canadian government-mandated 14-day quarantine this Fall.
Sources: CNBC, Vancouver Sun, Production Weekly.