Hollywood has returned to Overbrook Farms, and the cinematic results again won’t be cheery.
In 2007, director M. Night Shyamalan shot a chilling hanging scene on a front lawn near City Avenue for The Happening.
[b]Friday night, Law Abiding Citizen director F. Gary Gray used the Overbrook Avenue home of Aaron and Ann Selkow to film violent scenes with Gerard Butler, his character’s wife (locally raised actress Brooke Stacy Mills), and their young daughter, played by Ksenia Hulayev. The action was the setup for LAC’s plot: Butler’s character exacts revenge on the district attorney (Jamie Foxx), who allowed his family’s killers to walk.[/b]
Gray and his team watched monitors in Aaron Selkow’s walk-in closet. The crew “couldn’t be nicer,” says Selkow, who moved with his wife and 6-year-old daughter into a hotel while set designers turned their green walls gold and moved around their stuff.
“We thought the idea of seeing our house in the film would be neat,” he says, adding that they were “happy to make a couple of bucks” for the inconvenience.
Another Overbrook Farms family will lend its house this month to serve as the house of Foxx’s character.
Law Abiding Citizen, due in theaters March 26, 2010, did a night shoot Thursday into Friday in Center City. Butler, who was not even working, showed up and took photos with well-wishers. Foxx was spotted in a car with Colm Meaney, who plays a detective.
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