Production Weekly [via Twitter] is reporting that the on-location shoot in Australia for the Warner Brothers adaptation of DC's "Green Lantern" may be in financial trouble. Details are a little thin when they have to squeeze into 140 characters or less, but hit the jump for all the latest news... such as it is.
On August 16th director Martin Campbell told The Hollywood Reporter that he would be taking the Hal Jordan show down under -- he'd be shooting his film in Australia in other words. The start date for "Green Lantern" was set for September at Fox Studios in Sydney but it seems that our pesky global recession may have put a kink into Campbell's plans.
Here's the news from Inside Film [via tweet from Production Weekly]:
"Green Lantern's proposed Australian shoot is understood to be under threat after the rising Australian dollar has blown out production costs."
I'm no finance expert but here is what I could glean: Australia's currency (AUD) has been increasingly weak against both the dollar and the pound, losing over 5% of its value around August eleventh. If you want more details you'll have to look it up yourself - just be prepared to decipher gobbledegook like: "A lucrative yield gap was the last source of the strength for the antipodean currency..."
To put things back on terms we are all familiar with, studios don't go on location just for pretty scenery. They get all sorts of tax incentives and price breaks that make filming in "foreign" cities cost effective. The Australian problem, should it prove out, won't mean that "Green Lantern" won't get in front of cameras, it just means that those cameras may end up being in another city... and that means delays.
Whatever happens, Campbell has some time to sort it all out. The studio already pushed the "Green Lantern" release date back from December 2010 to the much more comic-friendly June 17, 2011.