Wahlberg’s Boston Marathon bombing movie seeks extras
By NBP Staff | March 7, 2016, 12:47 EST
Local residents of the Greater Boston area will have a chance to play a role in the re-telling of one of the region’s most harrowing events.
Boston Casting, Inc. said it will hold an open casting call in Allston on Sunday, March 13 for extras for the movie “Patriots’ Day,” the Mark Wahlberg film depicting the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.
“We need the best extras in the city of Boston to come to this open call,” Angela Peri, Boston Casting’s casting director, told Boston.com.
The agency is seeking police officers, firefighters, doctors, nurses, paramedics, SWAT team members and marathon runners in addition to general extras for filming to take place March 29-May 31.
The open call will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 129 Braintree Street in Allston.
“Patriots’ Day,” set to hit Boston theaters Dec. 21, features Wahlberg as an unspecified Boston police officer focused on the investigation and subsequent manhunt of the Tsarnaev brothers. Academy Award-winning actor J.K. Simmons has signed on to play Sgt. Jeffrey Pugliese.
Although big names and extras will likely be drawn to the project, locations to film it are getting increasingly more difficult to find.
The town manager of Watertown, where the dramatic manhunt came to an end, said Feb. 26 that the town will not serve as a filming location.
And this past weekend, UMass-Dartmouth Acting Chancellor Gerry Kavanaugh said the campus, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a sophomore at the time of the bombings, has decided not to allow filming at the school. Kavanaugh said the filming would be too disruptive.