Warner Bros may film at Mount Cook

Press, 31 July 1986, Page 20

Warner Bros may film at Mount Cook

Cameras will be rolling on the slopes of Mount Cook this summer if Warner Bros goes ahead with a $5 million feature film planned for the area.

The film is about problems faced by a group of university students on a climbing expedition. A young American actor, Anthony Michael Hall, is set to play the lead role. Hall has starred recently in National Lampoon’s “European Vacation” and “The Breakfast Club.” Other American actors are expected to appear, while New Zealand actors will fill the minor roles. Some shooting will also

be done at Twizel if the film goes ahead. The producer who has been working on the film for the last five years, Michael Jaffe, said Warner Bros would make a decision in October. Mr Jaffe runs a film company in Los Angeles and is now working on the final script and the budget for Warner Bros, which would make the film. “Right now I am working on certain deals that need to be done before it can go ahead,” he said. Location shooting in New Zealand would cost more than $5 million, and more filming would be done in Hollywood.

Mr Jaffe will be at Mount Cook in mid-August to finalise details of location shooting. The film would be “set” in Alaska and could be released in the United States next year. A New Zealand mountaineer, Graeme Dingle, has been working as a technical and mountaineering consultant for the film. Difficult rock-climbing sequences and dangerous glacier and river crossings would be filmed, said Mr Dingle. The film would end with a mass rescue after one of the climbers had fallen to his “death.”