“Batman” flew back to London Aug. 22 and downtown streets are back to normal after intense movie action was packed into a relatively short three week schedule.
Chicago Film Office director Rich Moskal and CFO project coordinator Kathy Byrne began last January to clear the way for filming that required “the full force of city participation,” said Moskal.
“Virtually the entire downtown needed to be involved ? the CTA, Transportation, Bureau of Bridges, police and fire departments, Office of Emergency Management and the city,” he said.
“We also had to get the cooperation of the downtown office buildings and condos because of night time chase sequences, such as two helicopters flying literally 10-feet off the ground chasing the Batmobile down LaSalle St.” (FYI: Five London-built Batmobiles were used.)
He said the producers were very pleased with the way the city accommodated their requests for downtown city streets, raised bridges, and Lower Wacker (which, now cleaned up, wasn’t at all the way director Christopher Nolan, who lived in Chicago as a child, remembered it).
The crew consisted of 220, about half from out-of- town, traveling with an unusually large volume of equipment. While the direct expenditures are not known as yet, Moskal acknowledged the movie “spent a decent amount of money here.”
The star-studded cast of “Batman Begins” features Christian Bale in the title role and includes Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Tom Wikinson and Rutger Hauer. Director Nolan is best known for “Memento.”
Warner Bros. VP/production Steve Papazian, who visited during the shooting, was so pleased at the way the city delivered, said Moskal, “that he almost immediately began talking future Warner’s business.
“And to hear the director praise us was affirmation and reward in the face of what was a complicated project,” he added.
