Carnival Row wraps second season of Prague shoot after spending record 3.1 billion crowns

Prague, Aug 24 (CTK) – U.S. film-makers have finished the shooting of the second season of the neo-Victorian series Carnival Row in Prague these days, which has been the most lucrative foreign production for the Czech Republic since the introduction of film incentives several years ago, Jiří Vaněk has told CTK.

Vaněk, from the State Fund for Cinematography (SFKMG), said producers Amazon Studios and Legendary Television spent almost 3.1 billion crowns in the Czech Republic on the series starring Orlando Bloom and Cara Delevingne, the shooting of which was interrupted by the coronavirus crisis in early March.

He said almost 80 films and series were shot in the Czech Republic last year thanks to film incentives, a large part of them being series shot for online platforms such as Netflix and Amazon.

In 2019, film incentives secured the Czech Republic’s record-high total of almost nine billion crowns in revenues.

As for Carnival Row, the incentive for its two completed seasons has been about 540 million crowns, while the project’s spend in the Czech Republic reached almost 3.1 billion, which is a record sum filmmakers have ever spent in the country,Vaněk said.

“This is a direct financial support for the Czech economy. Out of it, over 60 percent goes to non-film small and medium-sized companies operating in construction, real estate trade, catering, tourism, transport, health care, energy, fashion and cosmetic industries, financial and legal services etc. They are often regional suppliers from outside Prague,” said SFKMG director Helena Bezděk Fraňková.

The second season of Carnival Row was shot from November 2019 in Prague and at Barrandov film studio, in the north Bohemian town of Liberec and the Doksany, Sychrov and Libochovice chateaux, and in Nelahozeves and Tousen, central Bohemia. About 900 people worked on the film, of which only 10 percent were the foreign crew.

The first season of the series, which is a neo-Victorian fantasy with mythical beings, has recently been nominated for three Emmy Awards for the best costumes, original main title theme music and main titles design.

The Czech Film Commission, together with the SFKMG and other institutions, started to work on ways to restart audiovisual production in the country immediately after the state of emergency was declared by the government over the coronavirus pandemic as of March 12. As a result, film production resumed on May 7, the Czech Republic being the first country in central Europe to reopen to film makers.