Reel News

Tim Ryan

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Norris brothers to meet
with gov on series

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Chuck and Aaron Norris arrived in Honolulu yesterday for four days to meet with Gov. Lingle and Coast Guard officials and to tour the Hawaii Film Studio. Sources say the brothers' Oahu-based NBC series "The Guardian" will begin filming 44 episodes here in June over a two-year period. Chuck will portray a Coast Guard commander in the hour-long show produced by the Norris brothers and Lions Gate.

The producers finalized their contract agreement with IATSE, the union for the production crews, late last year. "The Guardian" will receive the same 3 percent rollback on salaries from IATSE as the Fox pilot "The Break" received for its completed three-week shoot here. The discount is allowed for pilot and first-year episodic shows, said Scott Wong, IATSE's business agent. The same scale apparently will be granted if "The Break" is picked up as a series for Fox. That decision could come this week. ...

The Big Island has become Reality Show Central with five shows filmed there last year. "Blind Date," "The Bachelor," "Last Resort," "Celebrity Mole Hawaii" and "The Amazing Race" accounted for about $5.5 million of 2002's $10 million in production revenues. Other production revenues: $1.5 million for sports events, $1 million for feature films and $1 million for print work (calendars and catalogs).

Statewide, Hawaii's 2002 production revenues may not reach the $140 million record that officials earlier announced, but the total is likely to surpass the previous record of $136 million in 2000. Oahu, as usual, led all counties with as much as $90 million -- $40 million alone from "Tears of the Sun." ...

"The Symposium," an independent film by Scriptwise Partners, has completed principal photography on Oahu. The project, an adaptation and modernization of dialogue by Plato, was shot on digital videotape over a 10-day shoot. Local actors Dann Seki, Cheryl Bartlett and J. Martin Romualdez were the principal cast members. The film was written and directed by Michael Wurth, who was convinced by local cinematographer and friend Shawn Hiatt to make it a Hawaii production. Scriptwise Partners plans to enter the production in film fests, including the Hawaii International Film Festival.

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Reel News unspools every Wednesday.
Contact Tim Ryan at tryan@starbulletin.com.