James Franco movies finish filming in Hamilton

Two movies being filmed in the city involving Hamilton native Jay Davis and veteran actor/producer James Franco have officially wrapped up production.

If residents happened to miss much of the fanfare of the productions for “Blood Heist” or “Blood on Wheels,” they should not be surprised. The two movies were quite different than the Cate Blanchett film “Carol” or even Franco’s “The Echo Effect,” an action thriller, that was previously filmed in the city.

The low-budget movies started filming in late July and with “Blood Heist” going into production first, and then “Blood on Wheels” finishing up production in mid-August, according to Film Hamilton Director Steve Colwell.

“‘Blood on Wheels’ started almost immediately following ‘Blood Heist’ and officially wrapped Wednesday. Some of the producers are still around town finishing up the paperwork,” Colwell said.

Davis described the films as “high concept Sci-fi cult horror films.”

Colwell said production crews were busy handling all of the movie projects that have been coming to the northern Cincinnati area lately.

“‘Girl from Compton’ was shooting in Middletown and ‘Gotti’ filmed some scenes in Hamilton at the local jail,” Colwell said.

”… it is hard to get enough qualified crew people to work. That means we have a lot of production going on here,” he said.

With all of the production success, there likely will be more film projects coming to Hamilton and Butler County.

“I can’t get into too many specifics just yet, but more projects are potentially on tap for us,” Colwell said. “We should be meeting with another production company in the next week or so in hopes of landing a few locations — at least — for an upcoming film. And there are some other projects looking to land here later in the year.”

The production on “Blood on Wheels” was so busy that Colwell even offered up his motorcycle for one of the night scenes being filmed in the city.

“Yeah, they used my Electra Glide in one of the scenes,” he said.

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