Taking the call from The Film Verdict while on the road as he traveled to another work site, supervising location manager and sometimes-line producer Joseph Formosa Randon is one of Malta’s most experienced film specialists. He has just completed line producing on Netflix’s upcoming series Lockerbie, about the terrorist bombing of a Pan Am flight in 1988 that killed 270 passengers and crew aboard, as well as Season 3 of the Amazon original Alex Rider about a teenage spy for MI6, shot in Malta and the UK and distributed by Sony Pictures Television.
So it seems the film and TV industry is booming here?
“There’s a lot going on,” he admits. “Malta is a small island and its locations can double for anywhere in the Mediterranean, Africa or southern Europe. It can basically double for whatever the production designer needs.”
He’s an expert in the field, having worked on virtually every big international production that has come to Malta to shoot, from Ridley Scott’s recent Gladiator to Munich, Napoleon and Assassin’s Creed. What else is coming up?
“Currently we’re prepping the British TV series Karen Pirie, about a Scottish detective who solves cold cases.” Shooting in the adjoining island of Gozo as well as Malta, this production is big business for the locals. According to Malta’s Film Commissioner Johann Grech, the production has created jobs for some 100 local workers. It is also said to be leaving behind €2.3 million for the local economy.
In addition to Karen Pirie, he is prepping K3 and the Tongue of the Mermaids, which he describes as “like Spice Girls for the pre-teen market.”
The one area that is “foreign” to Formosa Randon is local Maltese production, in which he has worked very little. “But there is a lot of talent here in every department, both in front of the camera and behind it – crews, actors, traineeships.”
