Movie with Hollywood stars to be filmed in Columbus. Here’s how you can work on the set
A Hollywood movie starring James Franco and Oscar-winner Tommy Lee Jones is scheduled to start filming this month in Columbus.
Co-producer Alexander Kane confirmed the news Wednesday to the Ledger-Enquirer as he traveled into town for the Columbus Film Office meeting at the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts, where he made the formal announcement.
The movie, titled “The Razor’s Edge,” is billed as an action thriller. IMDb, the Internet Movie Database, describes the plot this way: “A former mob hitman faces a dilemma when his daughter is kidnapped and his love interest targeted. He must take on a final dangerous job while evading a ruthless assassin.”
The entire movie will be filmed in Columbus, Kane said. Filming is expected to take a few weeks, from June 24 to early July.
Specific sites haven’t been finalized, Kane said, but they will be mostly downtown.
The movie originally was planned to be filmed in Vancouver and set in New Jersey, Kane said, but he convinced his fellow producers to film and set the movie in Columbus.
Kane is a partner with Mike Donovan at Workhorse Cinema, based in Fitzgerald. Since he retired from the oil business in 2017, Kane joined Donovan to lure film projects from the traditional Hollywood production cities of Los Angeles, New York and London to Georgia cities beyond Atlanta.
The selling points: Georgia’s second-tier cities and smaller towns offer diversified settings, Southern hospitality and less expensive costs for productions.
Plus, with state and local financial incentives and a growing population of skilled film crew members, thanks to Georgia Film Academy centers at institutions such as Columbus State University, this city and others in the state have attracted significant productions.
Just in recent years, movies starring Hollywood actors Bruce Willis, John Travolta and Beau Bridges have been filmed in the Columbus area.
“We’re always excited to learn when new productions choose Columbus,” VisitColumbusGa and Columbus Film Office president and CEO Peter Bowden told the Ledger-Enqurier in an email. “And once the pre-production begins from scouting, permits, location selection, etc., our involvement surges in order to provide a one-stop-shop experience for the producers. And as we learned in the quarterly film meeting, we hope to connect students in the Georgia Film Academy program at Columbus State University with this project for their internship and hands-on experience. It was also good to hear that there may be two other films immediately following this one.”
Kane welcomes anyone interested in working on the set of “The Razor’s Edge” as a background actor, an extra or a crew member to email him at [email protected] or [email protected], or message him on his Facebook page.
