Spectre, the new James Bond movie, started the Rome leg of its shoot today amid preparations including cosmetic changes to the city’s Museum of Roman Civilisation.
The place stands in for a cemetery: heavy cranes being installed to fish out one or more cars from the Tiber following a high-speed chase.
Set designers are at work attaching fake headstones to the museum’s marble colonnade after a religious order known as the Archconfraternity of the Departed vetoed use of the city’s Verano cemetary for a funeral scene.
The five-week Rome shot will also comprise a high-speed chase along the Tiber with one or more cars flying off into the river and James Bond parachuting from a helicopter onto the 15th century Ponte Sisto bridge.
Other chases will be staged inside Rome’s historic centre in the cobblestone alleys around the Piazza Navona, near the Trevi Fountain, and in the vicinity of the Vatican where a Fiat 500 will reportedly get crushed possibly in a crash with Bond’s Aston Martin DB10.
Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema, who worked on “Interstellar” will make ample use of drone shots.
On the talk show “Che Tempo Che Fa,” beautiful Italian actress Monica Bellucci, the oldest Bond girl, recalled how director Sam Mendes described casting her in the part as a “revolution.” “A Bond girl who is 50 is interesting. It communicates a different and more respectful way of looking at women,” Bellucci said.
Mendes and the crew have descended upon Rome from the alpine set in Solden, Austria, from which they released its first image and behind-the-scenes footage.