The next James Bond film is using a slum in India as a stand-in for scenes set in Qawra, it has emerged.
The as-yet-untitled 25th Bond Film, due for release some time next year, is being partly filmed in Dharavi in Mumbai, considered to be the largest slum in the world.
The densely populated slum has an open sewer that drains into a heavily polluted river, and like Qawra, does not have an organised system of rubbish collection.
While the plot of the film is being kept under wraps, Bis-Serjeta can reveal that the scenes set in Malta revolve around Bond, played once again by Daniel Craig, travelling to the island to buy a Maltese passport under a false name.
007 is then involved in an action-packed chase scene in which he is chased through the streets of ‘Qawra’ by the new villain’s henchmen.
“Ideally we would have liked to film the Qawra scenes in Qawra itself,” said director Cary Joji Fukunaga.
“But after our location scout visited the town and was ambushed by a gang of giant rats and cockroaches that emerged from a mountainous rubbish pile, we decided we’d rather risk catching typhoid and film the scenes in Dharavi instead.”
Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi, who was in Mumbai to visit the Maltese extras and take official government selfies with the star-studded cast, said the fact that a foreign location was being used to depict Malta showed how far the country had come.
“It’s also a great opportunity to attract adventurous Western backpackers who would otherwise have to travel thousands of miles to experience authentic third-world conditions,” he said.
