Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios secured special permission to film inside two public Atlanta high schools despite the coronavirus pandemic that has forced all students into remote learning.
Atlanta Public Schools students have been out of the classroom for more than eight months and officials said that would continue until at least January. But that didn’t stop the school district from granting special permission for “Spider-Man: Homecoming 3” to film at Frederick Douglass High School in January and at Henry W. Grady High School in March, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
In an email to the school district, Marvel Studios location manager Ian Easterbrook admitted that “filming a new movie quickly falls to the bottom of the priority list” for district officials, but that the two filming locations were “vital to the success of this next film” because they had already been established in the 2017 movie, “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” the AJC reported.
Mr. Easterbrook’s email reportedly said production would pay the district $50,000 for securing the location and any fees incurred.
APS spokesman Seth Coleman told the AJC that officials made an exception for “Spider-Man: Homecoming 3” because the schools had been used for shooting the films before, he said.
He said that if students are back in classrooms by then, filming activities will not begin until they leave the buildings.
