When supervising locations manager Andrew Buckley was looking for the right location to shoot Matthew Vaughn’s third instalment of the Kingsman franchise The King’s Man, Turin sprung to mind. They were coming to the end of Kingsman: The Golden Circle, where they were shooting in Italy’s Aosta mountains in a place called Courmayeur.
“We were trying to tie in a location so, based on the geography of where that was, I started looking what was nearby and I saw Turin and noticed it had these amazing Baroque palaces and infrastructures, not just in Turin but in the whole Piedmont area,” says Buckley. “Turin was just this hidden gem. Although people knew about it, no one seemed to really know how versatile the city was.”
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For The King’s Man, a key driver of the location lay behind finding the right place for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, which is considered one of the key events that led to World War I. Buckley started exploring Turin and noticed that the River Po had the same geography as where the assassination took place.
To boot, the ease at which production could travel to the region and the versatility of the region as a whole was a big plus. “The beauty of the Piedmont region is that from London you can fly there within an hour and a half to Turin and within half an hour, you’re in the mountains. It’s a very rich, versatile region for shooting locations. You can base yourself in Turin and shoot in the mountains and around all of the palaces and because it was once the capital of Italy, it’s got that history.”
Buckley says the ease at which the Film Commission Torino Piemonte could make things happen was “absolutely amazing.” He says, “We closed the main road Via Po with a phone call to do a director’s recce.”
Turin’s opulent Royal Palace was, however, “a bit reluctant at first”, suggesting production lay a carpet on the main floor of the ballroom for a scene of the film, which was a big aesthetic driver for the location. Production met them halfway and ensured everyone’s shoes in the scene were lined with carpet to protect the floor.
“The great thing about the whole region is that it has a film industry already –Turin itself as a city has fantastic crew that were fabulous so we were blown away by how easy it was for this shoot to happen.”
He adds, “When you’re taking a film to a location and if it’s a successful experience, then the idea is that other films will follow. Obviously the proof is in the pudding in that films like Fast X and Ferrari have since followed. I hope that that resonates through the rest of the productions that go there because I think the film commission is very proactive and encouraging as well. Turin, for me, was the definite high point for me in my career – I would go back in a heartbeat.”
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