Hawaii’s film industry keeps booming through COVID

HONOLULU (KHON2) — A highly anticipated Netflix film is starting production in Hawaii this week: Murder Mystery 2 starring Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler.

Many in the industry are hoping omicron won’t press pause on production.

The film industry is going through massive lengths to keep outbreaks from happening, among other protocols background actors are quarantined in Hawaii hotels for five days and undergoing testing every day before production began.

“All those combinations of factors together, are now proving that we can have this industry,” Hawaii State Film Commissioner Donne Dawson said. “We can move forward with a real strong economic driver for our state at a time when we desperately need it.”

As COVID spreads in the islands there have been some hiccups in the film industry, but according to Dawson nothing major so far. Actress Rachel Parker used to live in the islands and flew out from Los Angeles recently to film as a background actress, but her shoot was canceled due to COVID.

“I got cast in December for a role,” Parker said. “We went in first fitting did a COVID test at all that they changed the date a couple of times. But 45 minutes before checking into the hotel for our quarantines. They canceled us. So I’m very disappointed and bummed out about this about losing days of work and about something able to work on the movie,”

The film industry created $423 million in direct spending in Hawaii in 2021. It also created about 5,000 jobs.

Currently, NCIS Hawaii and Magnum P.I. are coming back to finish filming their seasons sometime this spring. Murder Mystery 2 is in production. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom wrapped-up filming with Jason Momoa, which is scheduled for a December release.

“He’s going to be back with more work for Hawaii,” Dawson said. “He’s got some very exciting projects in the future that that he’ll be back here to film and so we’re we’re just in a very strong state of growth for our film industry right now.”