Written by on Dec 30, 2013. Posted in On Location

New TV drama Tyrant to film in Israel

New TV series Tyrant will film on location in Tel Aviv and comes from the producers of terrorism drama Homeland. The series will focus on the son of a Middle-Eastern dictator who becomes embroiled in regional politics when he returns home with his US family after years in exile.

“With Tyrant, Howard Gordon, Gideon Raff and Craig Wright have produced a beautiful television pilot that will be a groundbreaking television series,” said John Landgraf, head of FX Networks: “Tyrant introduces characters and a world that have never been explored in a dramatic television series format. There is a reason a bidding war broke out over this project: it grabs you as all great epics do and simply refuses to let go!”

The pilot for Tyrant was in fact filmed in Morocco – a common double for Middle-Eastern locations – but Tel Aviv has been selected for the full series shoot.

Episodes of Homeland have been filmed on location in Israel in recent years, while producer Gideon Raff is also involved with Dig, a murder mystery that is set to be the first US series to film entirely in Israel.

Nir Barkat, Mayor of Jerusalem, visited Los Angeles earlier this year in a move that may have helped boost US producers’ confidence in the city as a filming location, as well as Israel in general.

Tyrant introduces characters and a world that have never been explored in a dramatic television series format.

John Landgraf, FX Networks

“When I visited Los Angeles, we forged a strong bond with the senior executives in Hollywood and when I brought them to Jerusalem, the City of David, the place where it all began, I revealed the cinematic potential of this important and fascinating city to them,” Barkat commented when Dig was first announced.