If you think it's difficult navigating a major European city as a tourist, just imagine trying to shoot a big blockbuster movie in the same crowded conditions. That's just what director Ron Howard and stars Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Ben Foster, and Omar Sy did to retrace renowned symbologist Robert Langdon's steps in Hollywood's adaptation of the latest Dan Brown mystery novel. Inferno is out in theaters on Oct. 28 and features gorgeous scenery and classical artwork that can only be captured on location in the settings Brown's book describes. When Bustle caught up with the cast and director at Fort Belvedere in Florence, where the film was shot, Foster called the Inferno filming locations, particularly when it came to the logistics of shooting in the capitol of Tuscany, "a producer's nightmare."
Florence's high concentrations of foot traffic and one-way roads called for lots of pauses while scenes were being shot. Despite the large crowds, Foster tells Bustle he wasn't in any state to inspire mobs of fans to approach him. The actor plays Bertrand Zobrist, a extremist scientist obsessed with correcting the overpopulation of the world. "Nobody wanted to talk to me, I was covered in blood," he says with a laugh. "Kids were crying."
Florence may be packed with people, but the field of whole and complex female characters in film who don't serve as love interests for the hero is sadly still under-populated. Oscar nominee plays one of the slight but growing number in Inferno. As Dr. Sienna Brooks, Jones is a worthy match for the quick-thinking Langdon but — to the actor's approval — not a romantic one. "We don't need another film about a romance between an older guy and a younger women," Jones tells Bustle in the below clip. "So it's great that it's about friendship, actually, and I haven't really seen that before. They really connect in a very meaningful way, but it's very much in an intellectual capacity."
Those are hopes that are shared by the film's director (and director of the first two Robert Langdon films), Howard. When Bustle visited the set, Howard acknowledged that television seems to be setting an example for the movies in terms of rich roles for women. "It's showing all of us that audiences crave it, and it's not just women," Howard says in the clip below. "Men can be fascinated by cool female characters as well, of course. But we have to see proof of that and we're getting that."
A European tour may be out of your budget this fall, but you can live vicariously through Inferno's Florence scenes, plus sequences shot in Budapest, Istanbul, Venice, and more. You don't even have to renew your passport, though you might want to brush up on your code-breaking.
Image: Columbia Pictures
