Major movie studios have their sights set on Romania

• Next month, Kevin Costner will return to shoot at Râşnov

• The Americans are attracted by the landscapes which are very similar to their own, as well as by the cheap labor which is needed to create the props

After shooting the TV mini-series "Hatfields and McCoy", for which he won the Golden Globe, Kevin Costner will return to Râşnov next month to shoot a new movie. Lodge owner Ioan Adămuţă, the one who created the props for "The Hatfields and McCoys", says that the props for the new historical movie of the American actor spun must be completed by next month. This movie will also feature American actor Mike Elliott.

In fact, major American movie studios Universal Picture International and Miramax plan to shoot 10 movies in Romania, and the officials of Castel Films are interested in getting them to come to Râşnov, a town which has already hosted the shooting of "Cold Mountain" ten years ago. American producers are attracted in Romania by the cheap labor, as well as by the quality of their work, which Kevin Costner praised himself. He said: "I liked very much how hard they would work. We had to transport 25 horses somewhere and we asked them for help. < Can you get them there by 12:00 AM? >. < Yes >. What they didn't tell us was that they would have to start at 8:00 or at 6:00 AM to get all the 25 horses to the location, because they only had one trailer for them. They do things old school. They said that yes, they can take them there, but it took them all night to get everything in order. At one time, we were trying to duplicate a tree. I don't know why I am telling you this, but we were trying to duplicate a tree. Where the men were talking, we had to re-shoot the scene. So we looked for another tree which had the right shape. It had to look the same, because otherwise the viewers would notice. We kept struggling and eventually, the art department said: < Why don't we go there, cut down the tree and bring it here? >. Something like that isn't done in America. We didn't let them do it, but this was the mentality, along the lines of < What do we have to do? This is what we will do. We will cut the tree down and bring it here >".

• Three months of filming

An American story shot in Romania the "Hatfields & McCoys" mini-series had the support of the Romanian crews for the entire duration of the filming. "We are very happy that the Romanians welcomed us and supported us. The story was supposed to be the highlight of our movie, because we didn't want much ado about nothing. We went there, we started filming in September and we finished sometime on December 17th, 18th, 19th perhaps. It was hard", Kevin Costner said.

He went on to say that if the movie had been shot in the USA, the actors' team would have been bigger, which means that finding interpreters was one of the difficulties which the production team was faced with since the beginning, in September.

"One time, we ran out of people who could speak English, which created a problem with production, at the end, when we were supposed to give people a new voice. When you take something away that is supposed to be there, you will face some logistics problems", Costner said.

However, he emphasized that Romania provided the exact environment for shooting the mini-series, which was very successful. The Carpathians, which look very similar to the landscapes of Kentucky and West Virginia, helped create a faithful geographic context.

The TV mini-series "Hatfields & McCoys", produced by History Channel together with Castel Film and made in Romania, also received five Emmy awards, under two artistic categories - best main actor (Kevin Costner), and best secondary actor (Tom Berenger) - and three technical categories - for the best sound mixing (by Romanian Dragoş Stanomir, together with Christian Cooke and Brad Zoern), best make-up and best editing.