Image: Ryan Reynolds/Instagram
She typically calls New York her hometown, but this week Blake Lively has upped sticks for sandier climes. The Gossip Girl star jetted into the UAE in recent days, according to social media, where she has joined husband Ryan Reynolds in Abu Dhabi. The Deadpool actor is currently filming 6 Underground, Netflix’s biggest budget movie to date, in the Emirati capital, with shooting kicking off earlier this month.
The A-listers this weekend joined Reynolds’ co-stars for dinner at BBQ Al Qasr at Emirates Palace, The National reports, with actors Mélanie Laurent, Manuel Rulfo, and Ben Hardy in tow. Canadian actor Reynolds shared a snapshot from the luxury hotel, located on the shores of the Arabian Gulf, to his Instagram Stories, with his wife pictured beside him. However, there was no glimpse of the couple’s two young daughters, Inez and James, meaning Lively could soon be jetting back to family in the States after a swift visit.
New action film “#6Underground” featuring the one and only @vancityreynolds is now filming with us #inAbuDhabi, directed by the legend @MichaelBay. It’s great to see another #Hollywood production filmed at the Capital for Content Creators. pic.twitter.com/NLCLCj6xGl
— twofour54 Abu Dhabi (@2454abudhabi) November 13, 2018
Reynolds is expected to shoot in the UAE for a little while longer, with filming set to last 30 days in total. The first official pictures from set were released last week by Abu Dhabi media hub twofour54, which is working with the Michael Bay-directed production. The two shots show Reynolds alongside Bay, actress Adria Arjona, and producer Ian Bryce, with Abu Dhabi’s blue skies and towering structures in the background.
Filming is also taking place further afield in the UAE, with the Liwa desert, Sharjah, and Ras Al Khaimah also hosting the 6 Underground cast and crew for scenes. “Shooting in Abu Dhabi is going to be one of the highlights of this production, although you’ll have to wait until the movie hits Netflix to find out why,” Reynolds told The National. “We’ve only been here a few days so far, but the welcome from everyone has been amazing and I can’t wait to explore Abu Dhabi more.” Bay added: “Abu Dhabi is a unique place to make a movie, with a lot of great looks. It’s got the diversity and architecture I need in front of the camera – plus the professional facilities, crew and infrastructure to back it up. I’m very excited to be shooting here over the next few weeks.”
Although the plot has been kept under wraps, the movie is described as a collision between Deadpool and Mission Impossible, the latter of which also filmed scenes in the UAE. The film, scheduled for a worldwide release on Netflix in 2019, is the streaming platform’s biggest production to date, with a budget of approximately AED 460,000,000 (US $125,000,000), surpassing The Irishman, which reportedly had a budget of US $106,000,000. Other productions to have been filmed in the UAE include Star Trek Beyond (2016), Syriana (2005), Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011), and Star Wars Episode VII – The Force Awakens (2015).
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An excerpt of this article first appeared on Vogue Man Arabia
