The Madrid regional authorities is hoping to harness the facility of movie tourism by investing €1.5m (£1.3m) in a brand new Woody Allen film that will likely be shot in and across the Spanish capital and which will likely be contractually obliged to characteristic the phrase “Madrid” in its title.
Regional authorities are assured the 89-year-old film-maker’s subsequent challenge may do for Madrid what Roman Vacation did for Rome tourism within the early Fifties, and what Intercourse and the Metropolis and Emily in Paris have extra not too long ago finished to extend customer numbers to New York and the French capital.
Allen’s final two movies have been made with monetary backing from European sources: Rifkin’s Pageant, which was shot within the northern Spanish metropolis of San Sebastián and launched in 2020, and Coup de Likelihood, which was filmed in Paris and launched in 2023.
The director, who not too long ago printed his debut novel, is believed to have struggled to supply large-scale financing for his movies amid the resurfacing in 2014 of an accusation that he sexually abused his daughter Dylan Farrow in 1992.
The declare, which Allen has persistently denied, was initially made within the midst of a custody battle between Allen and Mia Farrow over Dylan and her brother, Ronan, was the topic of two investigations, which resulted in no costs being introduced.
The Madrid regional authorities evidently believes that purchasing into the director’s identify and legacy pays appreciable dividends. “Woody Allen is likely one of the most multifaceted up to date artists within the cinematic panorama, and has formed probably the most unique and extremely regarded kinds in film-making,” the federal government stated in a doc printed on-line this week.
Rebecca Corridor, Patricia Clarkson and Scarlett Johansson in Vicky Cristina Barcelona which additionally acquired €1.5m in funding from Barcelona metropolis council and the Catalan regional authorities. {Photograph}: Allstar
“An audiovisual challenge with the traits of Woody Allen’s works, a director and producer of worldwide renown and status, whose characteristic movies are proven on screens worldwide (cinema and streaming platforms), provides glorious potential for influence and constitutes a great channel for selling the Group of Madrid as a vacationer vacation spot.”
It famous that a few of Allen’s earlier works, “with related traits to [this] challenge”, had achieved field workplace figures of greater than $150m (£114.5m).
Particulars of the contract, which have additionally been posted on-line, present that the €1.5m stake will likely be paid in three instalments between this 12 months and 2027, and likewise reveal a clause stipulating that “the ultimate title of the movie should embody the phrase Madrid”.
The contract goes on to require that a number of the funds will likely be contingent on the movie premiering at “the Berlin movie pageant or a pageant of comparable worldwide status”. It additionally says the challenge “must replicate the Madrid area in an simply recognisable method, with a small quantity of the working time permitting for the visualisation of identifiable and recognisable areas and places”. The forthcoming movie is referred to all through as Wasp 2026, an acronym for Woody Allen Summer time Mission 2026.
The deal is just not unprecedented: Barcelona metropolis council and the Catalan regional authorities invested a complete of €1.5m in Allen’s 2008 movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which starred Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Corridor.
“The filming represents a beautiful promoting marketing campaign,” a spokesperson for the regional authorities stated on the time. “It’s a wonderful advert; since information broke that the movie can be made in Barcelona, it’s been in newspapers all around the globe.”
The Madrid area, which is run by the rightwing, populist president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, could not have the cinematic cachet of Paris, London or New York, however it has lengthy been immortalised within the movies of Pedro Almodóvar, who moved to the Spanish capital within the late Sixties.
Final 12 months the town held an exhibition celebrating its central place in Almodóvar’s work, titled, Madrid, Almodóvar Woman. “I grew up, I had enjoyable, I suffered, I received fats and I flourished in Madrid,” the director has stated. “And I used to be doing plenty of these issues on the similar time the town was.”
