As South Africa vies with numerous other countries worldwide to attract big budget productions to its shores, hollywoodreporter.com reports that Hungarian capital Budapest is emerging as a new location “hot spot’.
Borys Kit writes that Budapest is the scheduled venue for Universal Pictures’ Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (directed by Guillermo del Toro), with The Boy in the Striped Pajamas already shooting there. Hollywood’s Raleigh Studios has opened an office in Budapest to offer production services and the city is seeing some serious studio construction.
According to Kit, the two biggest factors in attracting foreign productions are rising prices in Prague (for several years the European “hotspot’) and Hungary’s 20% tax rebate on all film production dollars spent in the country. Furthermore, the architecture in Budapest is said to be able to double for Paris, London or a medieval setting.
