Months after completing Kaua’i location filming, the last scenes of the new World War II film “To End All Wars” have been completed. Hundreds of Kaua’i extras will appear in the movie. Dozens of local crew members helped create it,
Months after completing Kaua’i location filming, the last scenes of the new
World War II film “To End All Wars” have been completed.
Hundreds of Kaua’i
extras will appear in the movie. Dozens of local crew members helped create it,
and two historic Grove Farm Homestead Museum sugar cane train locomotives
dressed as Japanese Army trains for the filming may steal the
show.
Director and co-producer David Cunningham and his cast and crew
wrapped the final scenes of his $14 million independent feature last week in
Scotland.
About $5.5 million of the budget stayed on Kaua’i, said Judy
Drosd, the island’s film commissioner.
Drosd said final tallies released
this week showed Argyll Film Partners’ cast and crew filmed for 43 days —
between May 8 and June 27 — during the Kaua’i location filming. The company
paid for 5,000 room nights at hotels and averaged 68 Kaua’i residents working
with the crew on any given day.
In addition, locally-hired extras working
with the cast on the film put in 3,870 working days, Drosd said.
Now the
film is in post-production and will be ready for release as early as January
2001, according to updates on www.toendallwars.com, the official Web site for
the movie.
When the film might appear on a Kaua’i movie screen hinges on
Cunningham and partners cutting a distribution deal. To help accomplish that,
the film’s producers have hired Beverly Hills entertainment attorney Mark
Litwak.
According to a press release, “To End All Wars” was financed by
equity investors. All distribution rights are still available in the United
States and foreign markets, including Great Britain, where the film is expected
to be especially popular due to its connection to the Scottish Highlanders
forces of World War II.
Cunningham, 29, spent about three months on Kaua’i
this spring filming mostly in a tucked-away valley mauka of Koloa Mill. The set
designed as a Japanese prisoner camp located in Siam.
British and American
film stars who traveled to Kaua’i for the production included Robert Carlyle
(“The Full Monty,” “Angela’s Ashes,” “Trainspotting,” “007: The World is Not
Enough”), Kiefer Sutherland (“Lost Boys,” “The Three Musketeers,” “Eye for an
Eye”), Jimmy Cosmo (“Braveheart”) and young Scottish actor Ciarán
McMenamin.
Japanese actors Masayuki Yui, Shu Nakajima and Sakae Kimura from
famed director Akira Kurosawa’s troupe also came to Kaua’i for the filming,
appearing as Japanese Army officers.
Academy Award winner Paul Sylbert
(“Heaven Can Wait,” “The Prince of Tides,” “Conspiracy Theory”) oversaw
construction of an historically accurate set on Kaua’i.
The screenplay for
the film was written by Brian Godawa and is based on the best-selling book
“Through the Valley of the Kwai” by Ernest Gordon. The 1962 novel offered a
gruesome first-hand account of life as a POW in a Southeast Asian prison camp,
while revealing the remarkable transformation Gordon underwent, leading him to
start a secret “jungle university” for his fellow prisoners in the camp’s
morgue.
Gordon, now 83, was captured by Japanese forces while escaping from
Sumatra (now Malaysia) after the fall of Singapore.
Then a captain of the
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Scotland’s military elite, Gordon was forced
to build the infamous Burma-Siam Railroad, during which nearly 16,000 POWs and
80,000 laborers died.
After surviving the horror of the camp, Gordon later
served as dean of the chapel at Princeton University for 26 years. In July
1999, he was honored by Queen Elizabeth II for his heroism.
New media
manager Chris Cook can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 222) and
ccook@pulitzer.net
