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The cast and crew of the hit "Twilight" vampire movie series may abandon plans to shoot scenes from the final movie in Rio after a deadly shoot out there last weekend between police and a gang who took hostages in an upmarket tourist hotel.
Riofilme, the city's agency for promoting movie production, told AFP that "Twilight"'s US production company Summit Entertainment was in talks with Rio de Janeiro state officials who were trying to convince them to stay.
The original plans were for scenes from the movie "Breaking Dawn," the fourth and final installment in the vampire fantasy, to be played out in the Brazilian city which is famed in equal measure for its spectacular beaches and its rampant street crime.
But the real-life drama Saturday of drug gang members taking 35 people hostage in Rio's Intercontinental Hotel as they tried to escape police has proved scarier to the production crew than the fictional vampires and werewolves they deal with.
After a blazing firefight that killed one person and wounded six others, the gang surrendered. There were 1,550 people in the hotel at the time. About 40 percent were foreigners, though none of them was hurt.
The potential loss of "Breaking Dawn" and the one million dollars it was expected to inject into Rio's economy was despairing for many in the city.
Ancelmo Gois, a columnist with the main O Globo newspaper, said "Rio's war" was causing untold damage to the reputation of the city which is to host the 2016 Olympic Games and part of the 2014 football World Cup.
