Film and TV productions resuming in New Jersey

New Jersey, USA has seen a return to production boom since the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike. 

Among the productions to pause were Ryan Murphy's American Horror Stories (a spin-off of Murphy and Brad Falchuk's American Horror Story in which each episode features a different horror story) and American Sports Story: Gladiator, and Billy Crystal's Apple TV series Before; their sets were stored in a studio.

Now, several productions have resumed filming according to Steven Gorelick, executive director of the state Motion Picture & Television Commission. 

These include Killing Castro, written by Jose Rivera and produced by Romulus Entertainment, a film set in Harlem in the early 1960s when Cuban president Fidel Castro came to visit Malcolm X. Production is taking place in Elizabeth, Linden and Newark.

Riff Raff starring Dustin Hoffman, Jennifer Coolidge, and Brian Cox has resumed production in Bayonne, Montclair and Plainfield. The film, produced by Canopy Media Partners’ Noah Rothman (Small Engine Repair) and Signature Films’ Marc Goldberg and Sarah Gabriel (The Estate), follows a former criminal whose ordinary life is turned upside down when his old family shows up for a long-awaited reunion. Dito Montiel directs from a screenplay by John Pollono.

In and out of development since 2011, Julian Schnabel's In the Hand of Dante for Warner Bros has begun filming in Patterson, with stars Jason Momoa, Gerard Butler and Johnny Depp.