A movie about a monster pig, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Tilda Swinton, will soon be filming in downtown Manhattan.
"Okja," a $50 million Netflix movie produced by Brad Pitt and written and directed by Bong Joon-ho — best known for 2013's dystopian action film "Snowpiercer" — will film for several days in July in Lower Manhattan.
The biggest scene, featuring a parade of nearly 500 extras, will culminate outside of the New York Stock Exchange, along Broad Street, near Wall Street and Federal Hall, Joe Guest, the movie's location manager told Community Board 1 last week.
The procession of 500 will end up at a stage near the Stock Exchange on July 23. In the film, a monster-sized pig will be a part of the parade — but that'll be computer-generated.
Billed as monster movie, "Okja" was partially shot in South Korea.
Swinton will play evil twins who are CEO and CFO of a large company. They sponsor an international competition to raise a massive pig. A little girl in Korea wins the competition — but she loves the pig, who she sees as her friend. The event on Broad Street is a huge promotional event put on by the company. Jake Gyllenhaal will play an animal activist.
"With Okja I want to show the beauty that can exist between man and animal, and also the horror between them," said Bong in a statement.
A big appeal of the location, which has been used in many other movies, is that the cobblestone stretch of Broad Street doesn't allow cars.
“We worked really hard with the city, looked at doing a whole bunch of stuff in Midtown trying to find an area that would work for this pretty large event,” Guest told CB1. “Broad Street had the appeal of being a controlled situation."
"We’re not impacting traffic and local residents by taking over a neighborhood street and having to move tons of residents' cars,” he added.
