Traditionally speaking, the Green Lantern’s only weakness has been to the color yellow. But, from the sounds of a Tweet from Production Weekly earlier today, the state of the Australian dollar may prove to be the hero’s undoing.
The long-in-development D.C. superhero movie “Green Lantern”, which in recent months finally added a director and star in Martin Campbell and Ryan Reynolds, has been in pre-production at Fox Studios Australia in Sydney for a little while now, and we reported not too long ago that it was all set to start shooting in November. But, with the Australian currency strengthening against the dollar, the budgetary advantage of shooting in the Southern Hemisphere has disappeared, and Production Weekly suggests that Warner Bros may be reconsidering.
“Green Lantern’s proposed Australian shoot is understood to be under threat after the rising Australian dollar has blown out production costs” is the exact Tweet.
Other Hollywood shoots have begun in Oz recently — both the latest ‘Narnia’ movie and the Guillermo del Toro-produced “Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark” started shooting over the summer. Furthermore, Inside Film states that Warner Bros are negotiating with the local government to increase the studio’s tax breaks to make up for the currency gap.
Fanboys can be pretty certain that, at this stage, the film is still going to happen (although, having said that, George Miller’s “Justice League” movie came at least this close to production before Warners pulled the plug) — even if the flick doesn’t roll in Australia, it’ll be moved to Vancouver or Prague or one of the many cities with good tax incentives for big budget movies. But with 500 local jobs at stake, let’s hope the studio and the Australian authorities can work something out.
Edit: A helpful commenter pointed out that the story was in fact broken by Inside Film, and Production Weekly ran it unsourced (the latter have since run a sort-of-retraction). Apologies to Inside Film…