Written by Tom Deehan on Apr 29, 2016. Posted in Production News

HBO’s The Leftovers moving production to Australia for final season

HBO’s fantasy drama The Leftovers will be moving to film on location in Australia for its third and final season. This is the second time the show has moved location, originally being filmed in New York’s Westchester County before moving to Austin, Texas for the programme’s second season.

Adapted from Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name, The Leftovers depicts life after a sudden unexplained phenomenon results in the disappearance of 2% of the world’s population, causing mass hysteria and social unrest.

The decision to relocate the production has been dictated by the script as opposed to a search for a better incentives deal as hints were dropped throughout the second season that the plot would be headed towards Australia.

Australia currently offers a rebate of up to 40% for feature films and 20% for a television series shooting on location. Alternatively, a rebate of 16.5% is available for high-end productions such as Thor: Ragnarok and Alien: Covenant which will begin filming on location later this year.

Comparatively, Australia has the more appealing incentive programme over Texas particularly after the latter’s budget was cut by over half in late 2015, resulting in the loss of numerous productions.

President of the Austin Film Society, Mike Blizzard explains: “to have… books that were written about Texas, or scripts, going and shooting in other states and pretending it's Texas, is particularly galling. The biggest example was No Country for Old Men which was a Texas story, and was shot in New Mexico.”

The Leftovers’ final season is expected to air in late 2016.