First it was Hollywood, and now Bollywood comes to Derbyshire
DERBYSHIRE has provided the backdrop to numerous cinema blockbusters, and now a new Bollywood movie is being filmed in the county, with star Akshay Kumar spotted.
Filming, which took place near Wirksworth on Wednesday, has been shrouded in secrecy with the members of Ecclesbourne Valley Railway unable to speak a word of it until the stars, extras and crew had arrived. Now the secret is out.
The Bollywood film stars Canadian and Indian heartthrob Akshay Kumar, one of the highest paid and most popular actors on the Bollywood scene.
he arrived in Wirksworth at around 8am on Wednesday along with the film crew and around 150 actors and a whole host of extras.
This year has seen the hills and quarries of Derbyshire become increasingly popular with production companies for both film and TV.
Wirksworth was also the scene as the new Star Wars series took over Middleton Quarry back in June and, of course, there was Dalton Quarry above Stoney Middleton.
That was the setting for the spectacular stunt where a locomotive was driven off the edge of a cliff as part of the latest Mission Impossible film with superstar Tom Cruise looking on from a field close by.
News of the latest invasion by film crews into the Derbyshire Dales was posted on social media by Ecclesbourne Valley Railway who said the filming contract between them and the production company meant that they had to keep it all a secret “due to the crowds that some of the actors attract”.
However, that did not stop some fans from making the trip to the Dales to try to see their hero.
The railway group did give an insight into what was being filmed on the heritage line: “There was a murder and a body hanging from a railway bridge and I am assured this important scene will result in Bollywood movie fans descending on the railway to see where it was filmed!”
Bollywood is the main film industry in India and in terms of the number of films it produces and the number of people who watch them it is more popular than Hollywood, with Bollywood producing an average of 1,000 films a year seen by approximately three billion people.