A financially-strapped Florida county has offered Hollywood the chance to blow up a bridge it cannot afford to maintain.
Friendship Bridge in Tampa BayThe decaying 2.6 mile-long Friendship Trail Bridge was deemed unsafe and closed last year after an engineering report concluded it was in danger of collapsing into Tampa Bay.
Politicians in Pinellas County have baulked at the $48 million (£32 million) it would cost to repair the concrete bridge but are also dismayed by the $13 million (£8.5million) it would cost to demolish it.
The solution that has been put forward by John Morroni, a county commissioner, is to offer a big-budget filmmaker the chance to include the bridge's demolition in its production.
"See if there is anyone, any kind of filmers, that would like to come down and blow up that bridge for a movie," Mr Morroni told the St Petersburg Times.
And they would do it under their budget and it wouldn't cost us a thing, or very little." The idea may sound far-fetched but Pinellas County has had some success in this area. In 1991, the producers of Lethal Weapon 3, an action film starring Mel Gibson, paid the county $50,000 for the right to film the old city hall being torn down.
However, the feasibility of auctioning the bridge's destruction has been played down by the state's film commission, which seeks to encourage productions in Florida.
Todd Roobin, a Florida Film Board member, said Hollywood producers no longer had the sort of budget to cover the entire cost of a demolition although he conceded they might pay for some of it.
No comments:
Post a Comment