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costumes and, at its height, Barrandov was churning out
dozens of movies a year. (It’s possible to arrange a tour of
the studio: contact
for details.)
When cuts struck Barrandov after communism’s
collapse, McCallum took a chance and hired some of
its workers for
‘Young Indy’.
He can still remember his
excitement at realising what they had stumbled upon.
“We did four days at the National Theatre, a huge
sequence with a ballet, an orchestra and 1,200 extras,”
he recalls. “It was unbelievable.”
For Lucas and McCallum, Prague was like a giant
chocolate box. “I think we filmed in 1,700 locations.
There was nothing we didn’t shoot, no place we couldn’t
get to.” One night in a pub by Prague Castle, McCallum
bumped into a man who reckoned he could even get
them onto the world-famous Charles Bridge (they had
been struggling, for once, to gain permission to film
there). It turned out to be President Václav Havel. “He
couldn’t believe we were shooting in Prague,” McCallum
says. Three days later, they were filming on the bridge.
Where Lucas pioneered, Hollywood followed. Great
locations, ready-made studios, experienced crews: the
city had everything, including cheap currency. “Films
could be made for 40% less than in the States,” McCallum
points out. When
Titanic
smashed all box-office records
in 1997, Wall Street opened the
investment floodgates.
“Anything that was visual-
effects driven was given the
green light. There weren’t
enough places to do it in the
US or London, so Prague was
the spillover.”
With
Bond
scenes at the
National Museum,
Bourne
sequences on Kampa Island,
and fantasy films like
Hellboy
and
Blade II
on the
Barrandov stages, by the mid-2000s, Prague really did
look like ‘the Hollywood of the East’. “You’d go into bars
and see more people fromHollywood than you would in
Hollywood,” jokes Albert Hughes, a Detroit-born
director who first came to the city to recreate the streets
of Victorian London’s East End for the 2001 Johnny Depp
movie
FromHell
. Though based in LA at the time,
Hughes, who rose to prominence after making
Menace II
Society
in 1993, fell in love with the city and even ended
up living there.
IN THE CAN
05
The Barrandov Film
Studios in Prague
06
Prague is Victorian
London in From Hell,
starring Johnny Depp
07
They’ve been making
films at Barrandov
since the 1930s
08
Director Roman
Polanski (top left),
filming Oliver Twist
09
Milla Jovovich as Joan
of Arc
05
07
06
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