Christian Bale movie filmed in Butler County coming to Netflix
Butler County residents can see their home county on the big screen as “The Pale Blue Eye,” a movie starring Christian Bale of “Batman” fame, and Harry Melling of the “Harry Potter” movies, was in limited release at theaters last week and will be available on Netflix on Jan. 6.
The movie was filmed a year ago at several locations in the county. Residents likely will recognize locations in McConnells Mill State Park, such as the covered bridge, historic gristmill, Kildoo Trail, Rim Road Climbing Area and Kildoo Picnic Area, as well as locations around Moraine State Park and Portersville.
In the Pittsburgh region, where the famous George Romero zombie series “Night of the Living Dead” was filmed, it still gets festivals dedicated to it yearly around Halloween.
Jack Cohen, president of the Butler County Tourism & Convention Bureau, mentioned those films as still being a tourist driver for the area. The first movie of the “Living Dead” series was filmed in Evans City.
Movie fans flocking to see the filming locations is just one way a film provides financial benefits to a community. The actual filming of the movie though, more often than not, provides more financial benefits to the community. With the cast, crew and everyone else involved with the film spending their time and money in the area.
“Don’t forget all the people that come with them,” Cohen said. “All those folks, they stay in our hotels; they eat in our restaurants. It’s great for our community.”
“It’s a huge domino of economic impact,” said Jordan Grady, president of the Butler County Chamber of Commerce. “Obviously, you have the cast and crew that need hotel rooms, they need to eat lunch, dinner, breakfast, they need their morning coffee. God forgive they have an emergency, they need the eye doctor or the hospital. And when you’re in town, you explore, who knows what gift shops or retailers they walked into.”
“It really presents a great opportunity to feature our community to guests,” he said “And when you talk movies that obviously feature Christian Bale, when you bring in a name like that, now you have someone of that stature that gets to experience Butler, I think it’s a great thing.”
“The Pale Blue Eye” is a Gothic thriller based on a novel of the same name by Louis Bayard. The film is directed by Scott Cooper, and produced by Bale, Cooper, Tracey Landon, John Lesher and Tyler Thompson.
The plot follows a veteran detective who investigates a series of murders at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1830, helped by a detail-oriented young cadet who later will become the world famous author Edgar Allan Poe.
Unit publicist Peter Silbermann previously said the film's team chose the location for a few reasons. Mainly that the many of the team had experience filming in the area for the film “Out of the Furnace” and that the area is a good representation of the film’s setting, 1800s West Point.
“'Out of the Furnace' was glorious,” Silbermann told the Butler Eagle in a prior article. “Christian loves it here, Scott loves it here, I love it here, and people are wonderful. We're very happy to be here.”
“Our story takes place in 1830. You have a lot of stuff in this part of the state that is very old and very beautiful, and very perfect for this film.”
“When Netflix said, 'Yes, go forward with the film,' our director and our producer and our cinematographer went on scouts with our location managers. They are local, and they know this part of Western Pennsylvania extremely well.
“The idea for them is they read the script and then break it down into the visual needs of the film. Even though this film takes place at West Point, West Point doesn't look like it did in the 1800s. It kind of looks like Silicon Valley. We couldn't film there. Our location scouts, they break it down and they look at various locations. This bridge worked perfectly.”
The movie is rated “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes with a 66% rating, which means that about two-thirds of critics who have seen it have given it a positive review. The only regional theater showing the film is the Diamond Theater in Ligonier, but will see its wide release on Netflix on Jan. 6.
