The hottest rumour that graced our coast in recent months seems to be true: James Bond is about to visit Dubrovnik!
The 25th film in the series about the world’s most famous spy will partially be filmed in the Pearl of the Adriatic. The new film’s leading man, Hollywood star Daniel Craig who is reprising the role, is supposed to arrive to Dubrovnik at the beginning of 2018, reported Jutarnji on September 27, 2017.
Negotiations are underway and it’s not yet certain whether Dubrovnik will be the only filming location in Croatia for this particular project, or if the production crew plans to move around multiple locations in the country. Once that part of the negotiation process is settled, it will be possible to establish the extent of financial profit that James Bond will bring to Dubrovnik and Croatia in general.
In the last couple of years, numerous Hollywood blockbusters and famous TV series were filmed in Croatia, Dalmatia in particular: ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘Star Wars’ were filmed in Dubrovnik, Vis island is getting ready for filming of ‘Mamma Mia 2’, and the popularity of Dubrovnik in the ‘Game of Thrones’ era can literally be measured in millions of euro. The Institute of Economy in Zagreb published a report in July, stating that around 130 million euro of secondary profit were earned owing to guided tours inspired by the fantasy series.
The Croatian leg of the ‘Robin Hood’ project took seven weeks of preparations followed by two weeks of filming, resulting in a profit of around 40-60 million kuna for Croatia.
Hrvoje Hribar, the former director of the Croatian Audio-Visual Centre (HAVC), said he doesn’t want to speculate about the possible profit to be brought by James Bond just yet. “We don’t know whether filming will take 10 or 40 days, if they will need extras at all or if they will need a hundred of them, along with 70 crew members. It all depends on the producers. What is certain is that Croatia will get enormous promotional value, one that just can’t be paid for”, said Hribar.
If we were to use filming of ‘Robin Hood’ as an equivalent for Bond, it could easily happen for one day of filming in Dubrovnik to cost between four to six million kuna. One million will return to the production company, as Croatia supports the film industry through incentives measuring 20% of the total expenses.
No details about the filming project have yet been released, as the producers are still angry with the former Dubrovnik Mayor Andro Vlahušić who carelessly announced the news months ago.
Apart from Croatia, the new James Bond is getting filmed in France and Japan.
