AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS BIG PICTURE
PRODUCTION
SLIM FILM +TV HAD ALREADY TAKEN ON A MAMMOTH TASK WITH ITS REMAKE OF THE JULES VERNE CLASSIC – AND THEN COVID STRUCK. TIM DAMS REPORTS
P DETAILS
Exec producers Simon Crawford Collins, Pascal Breton, Lionel Uzan Exec producer, South Africa Winnie Serite Creators, writers, exec producers Ashley Pharoah, Caleb Ranson Writer (Ep 6) Peter McKenna Writer (Ep 8) Stephen Greenhorn Producer Peter McAleese Director (Ep 1,2,3,4,8) Steve Barron Director (Ep 5,6) Brian Kelly Director (Ep 7) Charles Beeson Production designer Sebastian Krawinkel DoP (Ep 1,2,3,8) Alvaro Gutierrez DoP (Ep 4,5,6,7) Mannie Ferreira Supervising editor Adam Bosman Costume Designer Kate Carin
ublished in 1872, Jules Vernes’ classic Around the World in 80 Days famously centres on Phileas Fogg
accepting an almost impossible wager – to circumnavigate the globe in just eighty days. Adapted in 1956 as an Oscar winning
film starring David Niven and then in 2004 with Steve Coogan in the lead, it’s now coming to television screens following an international shoot that sounds almost as impossible as the book’s original wager. With a budget of around £40 million, the TV
series negotiated Covid-19 lockdowns to film in Romania and South Africa where massive sets were built to recreate 1870s London, Paris, New York as well as an Indian hillside village, Arabian desert, the streets of Hong Kong, a Wild West town and a Pacific island. At various points there were up to 3,000 people working on the show. It was a beast of a production, says executive
producer Simon Crawford Collins of Slim Film + Television. He describes it as a like an 1872-set road trip. “Nothing is ever in the same place – it all involves trains, boats, camels. Everything is on the move.” For example, an ‘amazing’ New York street set which took two months to build in Romania was filmed on for just three hours. “The designer was almost in tears,” says Crawford Collins. The idea for adapting the novel followed a
‘bookshop trawl’ by Slim’s development team. Around the World in 80 Days was picked out for being a title that everyone knew, but with a story that was less familiar. A script was then commissioned with Caleb Ranson (Child Of Mine, Heartless) and Ashley Pharoah (Life On Mars, Ashes To Ashes) leading a team of writers. “I thought that pitching it as an idea wouldn’t
work, but getting a script written and then pitching it was the way to go,” says Crawford Collins. The first broadcaster to bite was France
Télévisions, which liked the way the script developed the backstory of Fogg and his companion Passepartout so they are more fully rounded characters than they were in the films and the book, and adds the female character of aspiring journalist Abigail Fix, who reports on their extraordinary journey. “It’s got action, heart and emotion, and then of course Ashley
is very funny, so he’s managed to juggle those elements in the way that he did with Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes,” says Crawford Collins. France Télévisions then introduced the project
to the European Alliance, its pact with Italy’s RAI and Germany’s ZDF to share funding of large-scale series so they can compete with US streamers. This triumvirate of broadcasters formed the cornerstone of Around the World in 80 Days’ financing. France Télévision also introduced Slim Film + TV to French co-production partner and distributor Federation Entertainment. Further funding came via South African and Romanian government grants, as well as sales to the BBC for the UK and PBS in the United States. Another key moment was signing David Tennant as the lead. The production then set about building major
“WE HAD TO SUDDENLY START REPATRIATING PEOPLE,
FLYING THEM BACK TO EVERY CORNER OF THE GLOBE”
sets in Romania and South Africa. Romania was the location for the colder Northern hemisphere sets such as London, New York and Paris, while South Africa provided the hotter territories such as India, Arabia, a Pacific Island and Hong Kong. Three weeks into
the shoot at Cape Town Studios in South
Africa, and with one episode filmed, the entire production had to shut down amid Covid-lockdowns. “We had to suddenly start repatriating people, flying them back to every corner of the globe,” recalls Crawford Collins. Production only began again in November.
But South Africa was still struggling with Covid, so the decision was taken to restart in Romania. It meant some of the sets that had already been built in South Africa – such as one of the Hong Kong docks – had to be pulled down because another production was booked to move into the studio. The cast and crew returned to South Africa
early this year to finish filming, stepping on to a huge Indian village set that had been built outside Cape Town almost a year to the day after production stopped. In the meantime, security had guarded the set 24/7 for the whole year. In some ways, Crawford Collins thinks
Around the World in 80 Days was lucky to have shot for three weeks before it shutdown. “On a basic, practical level, there was a big financial commitment which no one wanted to give up on. But we were also really excited by the rushes.” He says the production aimed for a “real,
Winter 2021
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