Written by on Aug 11, 2015. Posted in On Location

Moscow-set gangster drama Mafiya to go into production for early 2016

Gangster series Mafiya will be set in Russian capital Moscow and will start filming in early 2016. In recent years Hollywood productions like Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit have doubled cities as diverse as Liverpool for the Russian capital.

Bruce Willis' action sequel A Good Day to Die Hard (right) used Budapest as a stand-in for Moscow in 2012.

Mafiya will chart the power struggles that shook the city’s organised criminal gangs in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in the mid-1990s.

William Nicholson has written the ten-part series and it will be produced by Archery Pictures in the UK, which is partnering with The Weinstein Company and ITV Studios Global Entertainment.

“Bill has created a fascinating and thrilling window into the world of the Russian Oligarchy, an epic drama that takes you from the fall of the Berlin Wall through to the election of Vladimir Putin,” said Kris Thykier and Liza Marshall, the co-founders of Archery Pictures.

“We are excited to bring his vision to life and could not be happier to be partnering with the combined might of The Weinstein Co. and ITV Studios Global Entertainment.”

Moscow is rarely used as a long-term filming location for international productions, partly because of local corruption issues. Kenneth Branagh used Liverpool as a stand-in for Moscow in the spy drama Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit.

“Some of what we wanted, which is the brilliantly noisy architecture of Moscow - lots of buildings going up and the sense of the city being transformed - we felt that we could get in some parts of the city of London and get the scale. And some visual effects would also allow us to create some of what we had to do ourselves,” Branagh said when the film was first released.