Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Another Extortion Attempt Made On Transformers 4 Production

Once again Hong Kong, China shows its ugly side as a crew of four attempted to extort money from Transformers: Age of Extinction production. This sounds like a repeat of last week's attempt. One of the four involved have been arrested with police looking for the other three. No violence or injuries reported. From Hong Kong's The Standard:
Police are searching for three men in connection with a second blackmail attempt on the production crew of Transformers: Age of Extinction.

One of the suspects was arrested while three others fled when police were called on Tuesday.

A week ago several men roughed up US director Michael Bay and some crew members. There are fears the incidents may tarnish the image of Hong Kong in the movie world.

In the most recent incident, the crew were preparing to film on the roof of I-Feng Mansion on To Kwa Wan Road when four men showed up around 2.30pm and demanded money with threats.

A female manager called the police who arrived minutes later and arrested a 35-year-old, surnamed Tse.

Hong Kong Film Directors' Guild honorary president Cheung Tung-joe described the incidents as shocking.

Cheung said he had rarely heard of directors being threatened in the past 10 years, but maybe those involved in the recent cases believed they could make big money from a foreign production team.
My guess is the various gangs in the area figured the mostly American crew would be easy marks. I am surprised that China's government has not sent the word out that the TF4 production is off limits after the 1st incident. After all the government is part of the driving force behind the TF4 co-production agreement. Partly for economic reasons and partly to help create a positive PR for the country. Incidents like this do nothing to help that goal.

7 comments:

  1. More silly pathetic marketing stunts.

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    1. Age of Aredo10/24/2013 9:28 AM

      A marketing stunt that the overwhelming majority of the movie going audience won't ever hear about? Whatever your doing for a living you should quit and become an ad executive. You've been wasting your true talent.

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  2. Ofcours it will tarnish Hong Kong in the movie world. Imo this should be a wake up call for Hollywood NOT to shoot in China and to NOT please the Chinese market in this way
    If you want Chinese actors in the movie, that's okay, but they have to come over to the U.S., if they want there country to be represented.

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    Replies
    1. Six Pipes
      Its a new venture... A testing ground. The Chinese now see they need to tighten up a bit. I'm sure this is a wake up call... I doubt this will stop them from trying to make this relation happen. Alas I could be wrong... But Bay and gang knew it would come with a few challenges going in, I'm sure. Though I doubt that thought it would go this far. I hope they can sort things out.

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    2. Six Pipez
      **they

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  3. This isn't helping China out at all. This is going to discourage a lot of future movies from going there with all of this going on.

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  4. It's definately not helping their image, at all. While I'm sure that the Chinese people as a whole are wonderful, You couldn't pay me enough to go there.Of course, there are places here in the States you couldn't pay me to goto either.

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