It was expected to some extent but now actor Armie Hammer has pretty much confirmed it – the upcoming new adaptation of “Death on the Nile” will have few if any scenes set in Egypt itself.
Kenneth Branagh’s follow-up to “Murder on the Orient Express” sees Branagh reprising the role of Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot in another lavish all-star take on one of Christie’s most famous works. One of the big selling points of the story is the location with the action unfolding aboard the S.S. Karnak cruising down the Nile River along with stops before and during the cruise.
The Oscar-winning 1978 adaptation that starred the likes of Maggie Smith, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury, David Niven, George Kennedy and Peter Ustinov as Poirot, famously shot seven weeks on location in Egypt with actual on-location sequences at Abu Simbel, the temple of Karnak at Luxor, Aswan, and even climbing the pyramids at Giza. Cast and crew were up from 4am daily to film in the mornings because they couldn’t shoot at midday due to the 54C/130F temperatures.
That’s not true of this new version though. Hammer, who takes on a key role as Simon Doyle in the film, tells Total Film (via Cinema Blend) he had a beef with the movie after signing onboard only to later realise he would be shooting almost entirely at Longcross Studios in Surrey in the UK:
“I’m still quite sore about being sold a false bill of goods that we were going to shoot this actually in Egypt. Then it moved to Morocco, and I was like, ‘Hey, that’s still cool’. And then it moved to Longcross [studios in Surrey], and I was like… ‘Wait a second – it’s Death On The Nile! We need sunshine.’
We did visit real Egypt, but we also recreated the Temple of Abu Simbel to its 150-ft height. We built an absolutely enormous Karnak Nile steamer. We built a massive water tank for it to sit in and float in, so we could have real water, a real boat, real people, and… [laughs], occasionally, in England, real sunshine.”
Gal Gadot, Annette Bening, Letitia Wright, Russell Brand, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Rose Leslie, Tom Bateman, Sophie Okonedo, Emma Mackey and Ali Fazal co-star in the film which presently remains on track to open in cinemas on October 23rd. Check out and contrast the trailer for the 2020 and 1978 film adaptations below.