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Reel News Tim Ryan |
Isle loses out
as location for
‘Longest Yard’Attention State officials: Paramount/ Happy Madison Productions' location scouts considered Oahu for "The Longest Yard" remake (starring Adam Sandler) with about five weeks of the $70-million budgeted film being shot here.
New Mexico, however, won out primarily because of its 15 percent tax rebate to productions. A legislative bill that would have upped Hawaii's rebate from 4 to 15 percent failed this year ...
Greg Poirier, who wrote the original screenplay for the Columbia Pictures' King Kamehameha biopic, has been replaced with "Kleopatra" writer Karen Essex for the film now called "Battle for Paradise." (We can only hope that's a working title.) Essex wrote "Kleopatra" -- published in 2001 -- of the story of the Egyptian queen. She adapted the book for fiIm as well as Anne Rice's "The Mummy" ...
Very well-liked unit production manager John Perry -- nicknamed "The Voice of Reason" by some on the "North Shore" series crew -- is no longer with the Fox show. Perry, who supervised the frantic construction of the show's mammoth and costly lobby set at the Hawaii Film Studio, departed suddenly last week.
The network says it was for personal reasons. Sources on the show say he was fired for cost overruns which "Reel News" had been told, by three Fox officials, had been approved ...
The WB network has quietly decided to stop using test audiences to gauge which fall pilots look like hits. WB execs now will decide on their own instincts. That means the John Stockwell-Lizzy Weiss TV show "Rocky Point" pilot will only be available to network executives for a pickup or not. Filming begins here in September ...
Two new cast members have been added to "Lost": Emile De Ravin ("Roswell") and L. Scott Caldwell ...
The N, the nighttime cable network for teens, will film this summer its reality series "Girls v. Boys: Hawaii" which was shot on the Big Island last year. The show pits teams of three girls and three boys against one another in physical and mental challenges. Winners get $30,000 ...
Pioneer Productions has been hired by National Geographic to produce a new series on predatory sharks, part of which will be done in Hawaii. Producers hope to interview several island shark attack victims, like Jesse Spencer (Big Island) and Bethany Hamilton and Hoku Aki (Kauai.) The production will film on Oahu June 1 to 6 ...
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Contact Tim Ryan at tryan@starbulletin.com.