Skies thick with smoke impeded visibility--and that meant The Aviator was temporarily grounded.
Martin Scorsese's epic take on Howard Hughes, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the billionaire flyboy, was the only major film or television project impacted by the devastating wildfires raging through Southern California.
An Aviator set at Big Sky Ranch in the Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley was partially destroyed over the weekend, forcing filmmakers to abort shooting on planned airstrip scenes for the time being. Instead, interior sequences were being filmed in Long Beach.
"We moved to cover sets because the surroundings weren't conducive to shooting due to the blackened skies," Warner Bros., which is coproducing the biopic, said in a statement. "For our production, this is just a minor inconvenience as compared to those who are currently suffering through the devastating effects of the fire."
The multiple fires, whipped by high winds from the inland desert, have as of late Tuesday leveled around 1,600 homes, left 17 dead and forced thousands to evacuate from the hills and canyons surrounding Los Angeles and San Diego. Many freeways have been closed and air traffic disrupted. The devastation runs from the Simi Valley, north of Hollywood, as far south as the Mexican border.
The particularly brutal fires around San Diego caused the NFL and ABC to relocate the Monday Night Football game between the Chargers and the Miami Dolphins to Tempe, Arizona.
The last-minute shift made for what an Alphabet rep said was "a bit of a scaled-down broadcast" via a Fox Sports production truck already in the vicinity. The telecast used only about 10 cameras instead of the usual 20, and made do without the use of high-definition cameras or a skycam.
Tickets to the game were free, but the National Football League encouraged fans coming to Sun Devil Stadium to make donations to the fire victims, such as those forced to take refuge at an evacuation center at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium, where the game would have been played.
Another live sports event, Motorsports' Monster Jam set for this weekend at the Orange Show Speedway in San Bernardino, has been postponed until November 22. Tickets already sold will be valid then, and the Clear Channel Entertainment production is now donating a portion of the proceeds to the American Red Cross to help local fire victims.
Regular television series were able to keep filming in and around Los Angeles. For example, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, produced on soundstages at Santa Clarita Studios, continued without interruption, although a spokesperson for the CBS drama said that smoke from the fires was visible.
Mike Dilorenzo, president of the Santa Clarita complex, which also houses HBO's Dust Bowl-era series Carnivale, told Daily Variety the facility was operating at full capacity. "We are on full alert due to the fires," he said. "I think everyone is really worried. We've got all our fire hoses hooked up and ready to go."
HBO's upcoming western series Deadwood, filming at the Melody Ranch in Newhall--also in the hills north of Los Angeles threatened by the Simi Valley fire--was not impacted. Also able to keep to schedule was DreamWorks' Terminal, starring Tom Hanks as an immigrant trapped in an airport, which is filming on location in the high desert area of Palmdale.
The fires hadn't impacted too many concerts as of press time, with one notable exception: The band Something Corporate nixed its Tuesday night concert in San Diego and has rescheduled for December 18.