‘Marie Antoinette’ Team Credits Bry Studios for ‘Seamless’ Shoot
variety.comBen Croll As production days notch upward across Paris, crews both local and international can sometimes find themselves competing not only for personnel and materials but also with a separate industry that predates the invention of the camera by several hundred years – the tourist trade.In 2019, France was the world’s leading travel destination, hosting 90 million international visitors.
Though obviously such numbers took a substantial hit when global travel tapered off in early 2020, much of the infrastructure and protocols meant to serve that older industry have very much remained in place.To see one such challenge this creates, one need only look to the Château de Versailles, which keeps traditional museum hours, remaining open to the public six days a week.
As the producers behind the upcoming Canal Plus series “Marie Antoinette” quickly learned – and those prepping the Johnny Depp-led, Maïwenn-directed Louis XV project set to shoot there later this year might soon find out – the palatial estate only opens itself to productions one day a week (on Monday, to be exact).
And so projects looking to open a window onto France’s Ancien Régime have to do so with a good degree of ingenuity. In the case of the lavish historical drama “Marie Antoinette” – created by “The Favourite” screenwriter Deborah Davis and due to air on Canal Plus and the BBC later this year – that meant splitting up production days between found and studio locations.Some Mondays the crew would make the trek to King Louis’ stomping grounds in order to take best advantage of the sculpted gardens, the marble courtyards and the iconic hall mirrors that were simply not replicable anywhere else.
Read more on variety.com
