Written by on Jun 10, 2013. Posted in On Location

JJ Abrams reveals California as his preferred Star Wars filming location

Filmmaker JJ Abrams has revealed he would have preferred to film the new Star Wars movie on location in California, rather than in the UK. Speaking at the Produced By Conference in Los Angeles, Abrams spoke of the inconvenience of moving his family to the UK for the shoot.

“When I came into it there was already a pre-arranged thing for them to be shooting in England, which really does make me insane,” Abrams told the Produced By audience: “I’ve never shot a movie outside the US or out of LA. We are, most likely, if all goes ahead, going to be moving to London at the end of the year.”

Abrams’ Star Trek Into Darkness was one of the only big-budget feature productions of this year to film on location in California and the filmmaker revealed this only happened because he covered some of the costs himself. California doesn’t award filming tax credits to features with budgets higher than USD65 million.

To find out more about JJ Abrams filming on location click here.

(Star Wars stills courtesy of Lucasfilm)