‘CREED’ DOES DELCO
CROWDS SEEKING TO BE MOVIE EXTRAS CONVERGE ON CHESTER TOWNSHIP STUDIO
CHESTER TOWNSHIP » Filming is underway for “Creed 2” at Sun Center Studios and in several locations across the region as Delaware Countians have an opportunity to be a part of Hollywood history.
“We’ve been shooting for 12 days now,” said Diane Heery, the film’s casting director, Friday of the sequel to 2015’s Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globewinning “Creed,” starring Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa and Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed, the son of Rocky’s first title-bout opponent Apollo Creed. The film received critical and mass acclaim and parts of it also were shot in Delaware County, including Must Fight Boxing Gym in Chester.
Written by Stallone and Cheo Hodari Coker, “Creed 2” advances the story of Adonis Creed as it confronts him with the son of Ivan Drago, the Russian fighter who killed his father decades earlier. It also features characters from the first film including Tessa Thompson as Bianca and Phylicia Rashad as Mary Anne Creed.
For this MGM movie, Heery said the producers are still in need of extras, as filming is expected to continue for months and they need a wide variety of people.
“It’s ongoing,” she said. “We always need new faces. We’re going until the beginning of June. We have scenes all over the place. We have a scene coming up that’s a hip, funky nightclub scene.”
There’s also scenes at a boxing ring and at a cheesesteak place.
The casting call on Backstage.com calls for men and women 18 years old or older of all ethnic types who must be local to the Philadelphia area. Extras will be paid for their time.
Anyone interested is asked to email their name, phone number, a picture taken in the last six months, height, weight, all clothing sizes, make, color and year of car if available to creed2casting@gmail.com. Applicants also should note availability for multiple consecutive days of work.
Heery said the number of extras fluctuates.
“It depends on the day,” she said, adding that some days they need 500 to 600 and other days, two.
She explained they need a vast number of extras to portray the environment of a small city. So, once an extra has been used, they can’t be used again.
This is the second installment of the Rocky Balboa series to make its way to Sun Center Studios as “Creed” also was filmed there.
The Chester Township facility has been the site of various major films from “After Earth” with Will and Jada Pinkett Smith; “Paranoia” with Harrison Ford, Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman and Amber Heard; “Franny,” starring Richard Gere and Dakota Fanning; M. Night Shyamalan’s “Split” and “The Upside” with Kevin Hart, Bryan Cranston and Nicole Kidman.
There have been other productions completed at the site including commercials for PowerAde, Arby’s and the Pennsylvania Lottery. Under Armour and USA Network’s “Political Animals” also had photo shoots done at Sun Center.
Four years ago, the campus hosted a 10-event summer concert series that featured an array of entertainers from the Beach Boys to the Indigo Girls.
The studios opened in 2011 and feature three 20,000-square-foot sound stages, 39,0000 square feet of office space, 45,000 square feet of mill space, a Gigabyte Fiber connection to the site, campus WiFi, 9,000 amps of power on two stages and more than 500 parking spaces.
The filming in Delco is a sizable economic generator to the county and the region.
With a $100 million budget, M. Night Shyamalan’s “After Earth” generated $82 million for Pennsylvania, while employing 500 people and producing 20,000 hotel room stays.
For now, Stallone, Jordan and friends will be crafting their art with hundreds of others to create the next sequel to the boxing series.
The “Creed 2” casting director talked about what makes this round unique.
“It’s always fun just doing another installment of the Rocky franchise,” Heery said. “It’s continuing life in the story of this world and now that Adonis Creed is part of it, it just expands everything and makes it much more relevant for today.”