The movie is called, 'After Earth' and it stars Will Smith, son Jaden Smith and is directed by M. Night Shyamalan. But the BIGGER, BETTER news is, much of the film is being shot in La Fortuna, as well as the Sarapaqui areas of Costa Rica.... So that's kinda COOL.
No, I haven't seen Will or Jaden... and no disrespect, but don't really care about shit like that although I do respect their acting abilities. But the production crew have been all over Fortuna, especially on Sundays... so I've gotten a chance to talk to many of them and they've all been super nice. Yes, they work with big stars but to them it's just another job and they're happy as clams just to be shooting in Costa Rica, as opposed to lets say, desert-like conditions in Mexico, which they told me are a nightmare. I enjoyed talking to the 2 women who work in 'costumes' and also had been involved in M. Night's previous movie, "The Last Avatar", explaining to me why they were worried about an upcoming scene in Sarapaqui- all's I know is they said, 'female lead', 'wedding dress', 'raging river', 'keeping it white' and 'we only have 2', all in the same sentence. To me, it's interesting.
Anyway, I gotta say, whoever SCOUTED locations for this movie got extremely L-U-C-K-Y, because if they hadn't been lucky (so far that is) they definitely would have been FIRED by now. Why lucky you ask??? Choosing to shoot a HIGH budget movie, where lost shooting days lose big BUCKS, in La Fortuna, in perhaps the RAINIEST months of the year was either just plain stupid or 'someone' did NOT do their homework I'm sure it's the latter. Typically, when it's the dry season most other places in Costa Rica, it's the rainy season here in Fortuna. But guess what? Lucky for dude, this January and first two weeks of February have been uncharacteristically, freakin' BEAUTIFUL and rain has been at a minimum. I know they had some serious issues caused by the rain 1 day/night last week, but normally, they could have multiplied that one problem times 100 if it were a normal January... when it rains here, we're talking landslides. *see pic above left Like I said, dude got lucky. Not sure they'll be so lucky in Sarapaqui, where the production is headed this Thursday, but for dudes' sake, I wish him continued LUCK because he's still going to need it. I do have my doubts, after all, this is Costa Rica and weather changes as much as I assume the costumes do in the movie. My advice to 'dude' if it starts raining with no signs of stopping- and some bigwig from the movie asks him WTF was he thinking booking these locations.... best 'dude' says what we all do when there's nothing else to say, "Pura Vida".... and just keep moving.
*Need a couple consultants when shooting a BIG ASS movie in Costa Rica--- We're available.
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