For a Locations junkie, I took my own sweet time to get around to blogging about Jumper, the Hayden Christiansen / Samuel L Jackson sci fi pic about a young man who learns that he has the power of teleportation. Given his special skills, it’s unsurprising that the movie’s locations include Paris, China, Egypt, the Sahara, Toronto, New York, Michigan, Tokyo and Rome.
Most impressive of these, the Rome Film Commission granted rare access to film in the Colosseum for three days.
The New York Times reports this film-making coup to have been made possible by Rome Mayor, Walter Veltroni, “an unabashed cinephile with a soft spot for Hollywood glitz. Mayor Veltroni dined with Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes on the eve of their Italian wedding, and was primarily responsible for creating the Rome Film Festival, which took place for the first time in October. On the business front, his administration has streamlined the process for getting filming permits, and authorizes more than 2,000 shoots in the city each year.”
To make Jumper happen, the crew was required to keep equipment off the ground by using harnesses and to rely only on natural light for filming the Colosseum’s scenes.