Godzilla is about to flatten the British Columbia coast and a certain chemist has arrived in town just in time to save us from doom…or will he? Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston is in Vancouver for the second American re-make of the giant mutant lizard monster. Principal photography began on March 18 in the city when the Vancouver Convention Centre was converted into a Japanese airport terminal.
This is certainly not the first time the “new” convention centre has been used for film shoots. It has been the set for various television shows such as Fox’s Fringe and the CW’s Arrow, was converted into a train station for the film re-make of The A-Team, and it even had a role in Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol when it was the setting for Bangalore, India.
VIDEO: Godzilla Director Gareth Edwards teases the movie’s first scene, filmed at the Vancouver Convention Centre
If you come across a movie production dubbed Nautilus, that is the working title for this film. Much of the movie will be filmed in Vancouver, but several other locations on Vancouver Island will also take part in the production. Filming is currently occurring at Ladysmith, Shawnigan Lake, and Nanaimo, where tanks, army soldiers, nuclear missile props and destruction sets were reportedly seen.
Aside from Cranston, who flew to Vancouver earlier this month immediately after filming the series finale of Breaking Bad, the Godzilla re-make also stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass), Elizabeth Olsen (Martha Marcy May Marlene), Juliette Binoche (The English Patient), Ken Watanabe (Inception, Batman Begins, Letters from Iwo Jima), and David Stratharin (Alphas).
There is some good news for skeptics. British Director Gareth Edwards has said the film will take on a dark, serious theme and will be based on the classical Japanese Toho version rather than Roland Emmerich’s awful 1998 New York City flick. Aside from this, not much is known about the plot but one thing is for certain: there will be a lot of destruction and mayhem in the movie – it is not a Godzilla movie without it. Godzilla will be released in 3-D at theatres on May 16, 2014.
Major blockbuster productions like Godzilla or the recently Vancouver-filmed Man of Steel (Superman) create thousands of jobs and inject millions into the local economy. The Superman reboot had a production budget of $175-million alone.
Written by Kenneth Chan, the Deputy Editor at Vancity Buzz. Follow Kenneth on Twitter at @kjmagine.
Featured image credit: BondArt
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