Steven Seagal Wants To Bring
Hollywood to Costa Rica
Action movie star Steven
Seagal told Costa Rican President Oscar Arias on Wednesday he wants
to help the Costa Rica build a filmmaking industry to put its
dramatic landscapes to use.
Seagal, known for his martial arts roles of the 1980s and '90s, met
Arias in San José
and offered to use his Hollywood connections to help Costa Rica get
started in movie-making.
"Costa Rica has everything -- both rain forest and dry climate. What
it lacks is an infrastructure to make movies," Seagal told a news
conference.
Seagal said he had a positive conversation with Arias but did not
elaborate on the size of any investment he planned or give a
timeframe for his project.
Apart from a handful of small-budget independent producers, Central
America's film industry is almost nonexistent.
Despite its reputation as a stable, relatively crime-free country
with lush and varied landscapes, Costa Rica is rarely used by U.S.
filmmakers, who often opt to shoot in Canada.
Costa Rica was the backdrop, however, for the 1992 film "1492:
Conquest of Paradise," starring Gerard Depardieu, about the arrival
of Christopher Columbus in the Americas.
Actor and director Mel Gibson, who has a vacation home on Costa
Rica's Pacific coast, had his production team scout the country's
jungles for his 2006 epic "Apocalypto" about the decline of the
Mayan civilization, but ended up shooting it in more-accessible
Mexico. |
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