Tyrant, the FX series about a fictional Middle Eastern ruling family, will film the rest of its freshman season in Turkey. The Fox 21 production had previously been filming in Tel Aviv and hoped an excursion to Istanbul would be temporary, but the production decided to remain in Turkey for the remaining episodes.
The production had built several major sets in Tel Aviv, but last week, those were abandoned for a temporary stay in Istanbul, according to Deadline. However, as the ongoing hostilities between Hamas and Israel only seems to be getting worse, the crew decided it would be safe to stay put. Writers are now re-working the scripts for the last two episodes in order to reflect the lack of complicated sets available in Turkey.
Tyrant has actually been filmed in three different countries. The pilot was produced in Morocco before Fox 21 and the producers decided to move to Tel Aviv.
The new show isn’t the only production affected by the conflict in Gaza. USA Network’s DIG is on hiatus after filming its first episode and will get another week-long delay to see if they can head back to Jerusalem.
Homeland, another Fox 21 production, also used to film in Israel, but is moving operations to South Africa for season four, as announced in April. It moved season three production to Morocco because of the crisis in Syria.
The Backstreet Boys have also been forced to cancel a show in Israel because of safety concerns.
image of Jennifer Flannigan & Adam Rayner courtesy of Jennifer Graylock/INFphoto.com