From the Asheville Citizen-Times:
Another major motion picture could soon be filming here. While no one is saying much for the record, the possibility that the movie is the potential blockbuster “The Hunger Games” is generating a lot of excitement.
While Lionsgate, the film’s distributor, is hush-hush on where the movie will be shot — phone calls were not returned — bloggers and Twitterites are basically putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with “Hunger.” The arithmetic works like this:
Gov. Bev Perdue told the Citizen-Times last month that “the deal is done” for a major film production in Asheville. She expected confirmation “soon.”
Sam Powers, director of the Asheville Civic Center, said Wednesday that a movie production company is indeed setting up shop in Asheville.
“I don’t know the name of the movie, but I can confirm that the city has been in contact with a production company, Ludus Productions, through AdvantageWest and the N.C. Department of Commerce,” Powers said.
The city has agreed, as an in-kind incentive, to make the former N.C. National Guard Armory on Shelburne Road available to the company for the construction of props and scenery, Powers said. Discussions are ongoing about the use of other pieces of city-owned property, he said. Still, the focus of the rumors — and of Collins’ novel — is not on buildings but on mountains and forests.