Australian Shooting Strike 15 Years Ago?

[Max Field]

Thought someone here could shed light on this:

 

I was watching a Sarah Michelle Gellar interview on The Howard Stern Show. She was promoting the first Scooby-Doo live action film. They shortly brushed on how it being shot in Australia was breaking some kind of labor union law?

 

Does anyone have any memory or explanation on why it was a union issue to shoot certain films in Australia back then?

 

Thanks for the history.

[David Mullen ASC]

Maybe it was shot in summer of 2001 when there was a production slowdown in anticipation of a SAG strike that never happened.

[Dom Jaeger]

I was working for Panavision back then when we supported that film shooting on the Gold Coast, I don't recall any local union issues. It was a period when lots of US movies were shooting here: The Thin Red Line, Matrix, Mission Impossible 2, the Star Wars sequels, etc. As David suggested, it may have been a SAG strike threat thing.