Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

500 extras needed for
‘Windtalkers’ film

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

Casting for 500 movie extras to serve as military personnel for the World War II feature film "Windtalkers" will be held at Marine Corps Base Hawaii-Kaneohe Bay's enlisted officers club this weekend.

The casting call will be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Extras will be paid $100 a day. The majority of the extras will be used to recreate the battle for Saipan, which will be filmed on Oahu between August and December.

The film, starring Nicolas Cage and Christian Slater, will highlight the Marine Corps' battle for the Pacific in 1944 and focus on the role of Navajo code talkers. This will be the second major World War II epic filmed on Oahu this year.

Producers of Disney's $135-million epic, "Pearl Harbor," spent nearly a month at Pearl Harbor and other military bases in April and May, recreating the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese attack. The USS Missouri battleship, now a floating museum at Ford Island, and several other ships from the Navy's Pearl Harbor mothball fleet were used to simulate battleship row.

Filming has shifted to Corpus Christi, Tex., where production will resume July 28 on the decks of the retired aircraft carrier USS Lexington, now a military museum.

"Pearl Harbor," which is being directed by Michael Bay, will be released next Memorial Day.