Rome stressing out over SPECTRE filming, Daily Beast says

Slight spoilers. For those who don’t want to read anything about filming of the movie, stop now.

Tensions are high between officials in Rome and Eon Productions over filming of SPECTRE, the 24th James Bond film, according to THE DAILY BEAST.

Here’s an excerpt:

Last week the cast and crew for Spectre—rumored to be costing almost $300 million, making it the most expensive James Bond film yet—descended on Rome. Daniel Craig and Italian siren Monica Bellucci, who will be the oldest ever Bond girl at 50, made their way to city hall to meet Rome’s mayor Ignazio Marino, with whom they posed on his balcony overlooking the Roman forum before he apparently told them to have their way with the city.

The next day, traffic was snarled and snippy security guards who spoke mostly English tried to bat away curious onlookers and angry Italians as the crew filmed a funeral scene in the district of EUR, the most fascist of the city’s quarters. There, they transformed the Museum of Roman Civilization into a crypt.

Then, they had the audacity to close off some of the busiest arteries of the city to shoot a car chase along the lower banks of the Tiber River the following day. Angry Romans who had to divert their paths threatened to boycott the film. “The film should be called ‘disagio,’” Emanuele Costrini told The Daily Beast, referring to a favorite Italian word for discomfort or inconvenience. “You can create all these scenes in a studio. Why do you need to cripple a city like Rome for a film in this day and age?”

Typically, when movies film major action sequences, they first must obtain permits. Some times, lots of permits. You’d think nobody would be surprised at this stage. Still, Rome is a different place. Perhaps this is much ado about nothing.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. movie, due out on Aug. 14 in the United States, also filmed in Rome in the fall of 2013. By comparison, things went quietly. But Bond always is a high profile production. So maybe it’s natural 007 draw more attention.

SPECTRE is filming in Rome for five weeks at a cost of $60 million, Variety has reported previously. Meanwhile, the MI6 James Bond site has run a number of articles about the Rome filming. You can CLICK HERE for a Feb. 19 article, HERE for a Feb. article and HERE for a Feb. 21 story.