After serving as a rallying point for improving California’s film incentive program, Dwayne Johnson’s quake thriller “San Andreas” has started shooting its final scenes in San Francisco after most of the film was shot in Australia.
The film’s first unit began shooting Sunday in San Francisco and will wrap on July 27. Second-unit shooting had started on July 8.
Mayor Ed Lee and San Francisco Film Commission exec director Susannah Greason Robbins visited the set Monday at a debris-laden AT&T Park, where the home of the San Francisco Giants was being shot to show the impact of a mammoth 9.0 shaker.
Even though the movie takes place in a California ravaged by the fictional quake, almost none of it is shot in the Golden State. Johnson portrays a copter pilot who rescues his daughter in San Francisco.
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Except for two days in May in Los Angeles, the rest of New Line’s $100 million movie was made in Australia at the Village Roadshow Studios in Gold Coast, Queensland. In December, “San Andreas” was granted a portion of Australia’s $20 million film fund to attract overseas movies along with offsets from the Queensland Production Incentive Scheme, local payroll tax rebates and federal rebates.
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Legislation to expand California’s incentives for movie and TV production was introduced in February and supporters have held three rallies since then with “San Andreas,” “Godzilla” and “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” often cited as productions that were set in California but shot only minimally in the state due to incentives elsewhere.
The bill has cleared the State Assembly and its first State Senate committee. The legislation would expand the incentive program to cover feature films with budgets over $75 million as well as new TV drama series, addressing the loss of such productions to other states.
Authors of the legislation have yet to specify how much to expand the tax incentive program, currently at $100 million per year. New York’s program offers about $420 million annually.
New Line has set a June 5 release date. Brad Peyton is directing from a script by “The Conjuring” scribes Carey and Chad Hayes, with a previous draft written by Carlton Cuse. Beau Flynn is producing through his FlynnPictureCo. along with Village Roadshow.
We're taking over @ATTParkSF @SFGiants territory today. Don't worry, it'll be back up & running for the Dodgers game http://t.co/r1QZBzmVvS
— Film San Francisco (@Film_SF) July 21, 2014