George Clooney And Julia Roberts Are Heading to Queensland To Film New Movie

George Clooney And Julia Roberts

George Clooney and Julia Roberts are heading ‘Down Under’ to film a new romantic-comedy, which will project an estimated $32.7 million into Queensland’s economy this year.

This new movie is among many other Hollywood blockbusters moving production to Queensland, thanks to grants and low COVID rates. The Australian economy will be receiving a $47 million boost from the production.

Universal Pictures’ Ticket To Paradise will start production in the Whitsundays, on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane later this year. It is also expected to create more than 1,000 jobs for local cast, crew and extras.

Rumours are still circulating that Marvel Studios will be relocating from Atlanta, USA to Sydney, Australia.

Queensland has become the ideal spot for Hollywood recently, as the COVID pandemic in California continues to increase (3.5m infections and more than 54,000 deaths), as well as many nonessential businesses and services staying closed.

6/10 international productions since July 2020 (that have already been filmed, or are scheduled to begin filming) in Australia this year, are located in Queensland.

Baz Luhrmann’s biopic Elvis, which will star Tom Hanks, Austin Butler and Richard Roxburgh, has recently finished at Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast.

Later this month, Ron Howard will begin production on his film about the 2018 Thai soccer team cave rescue, Thirteen Lives, with the Gold Coast hinterland standing in for Thailand’s Chiang Rai Province.

“It’s one of the few places I feel OK about not having my mask on right now,” Ron told Federal Arts Minister Paul Fletcher in an interview.

“It’s literally a breath of fresh air.”

MGM and Howard’s own company Imagine Entertainment will be receiving $13 million from the Australian government towards the production. This is then a part of Scott Morrison’s government’s $540m location incentive grant scheme for the film industry.

The Universal Pictures project that has George Clooney and Julia Roberts reuniting, was secured by the Queensland government through Screen Queensland’s Production Attraction Strategy.

Filming for Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s sitcom, Young Rock, which is based on Dwayne’s real-life experiences, was relocated to Queensland last November.

Also, Joe Exotic, a limited Universal Content Productions TV series based on the hit Wondery podcast, Over My Dead Body, which features big cat fancier and convicted felon Joe “Exotic” Schreibvogel and his nemesis Carole Baskin (who will be played by Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon), will begin production in Brisbane’s Screen Queensland Studios next month.

The NBCUniversal International Studios 10-part drama Irreverent will also be filmed in far-north Queensland.

The Australian government has recently invested well over $19 million for these three projects together.

COVID-19 travel restrictions and a $3.9 million investment from the Federal Government has also brought back the reality TV franchise Australian Survivor from Fiji and Samoa. The eighth season, which is in the Queensland outback shire of Cloncurry, will air at the end of 2021.

In New South Wales, the Netflix comedy God’s Favourite Idiot, co-produced by and starring Melissa McCarthy, has been promoted to Australia with a $10 million grant from the location incentive. It will be the third major Netflix project to relocate to Australia in the past 12 months.

The Netflix science fiction film Escape from Spiderhead, which features Chris Hemsworth was filmed late last year on the Gold Coast and in January, the eight-episode series Pieces of Her, which stars Toni Collette, began filming in the western Sydney suburb of Homebush.

In Victoria, the Liam Neeson feature film Blacklight began production last November, and in South Australia, filming has started on the BBC One and Stan co-production of The Tourist, a six-part TV drama that stars Irish actor Jamie Dornan.

What are your thoughts on this? Let us know in the comments below.

Written by Ashley Riordan

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