Tybee Island has landed a starring role in the new Miley Cyrus movie, and audiences seeing the film next year won’t have to wait for the credits to find out the name of the beach town filling the screen.
Location managers for the movie “The Last Song,” which starts filming on Tybee next week, told residents at a town meeting Monday that the island proved too unique to masquerade as Wrightsville Beach, N.C.
Novelist Nicholas Sparks, who wrote the movie’s script, initially set the story in Wrightsville and Wilmington, N.C. But filmmakers persuaded him to change the location to Tybee Island and neighboring Savannah so they could include local landmarks such as the island’s towering lighthouse and the oak-shaded squares in Savannah’s historic district.
“We had a hard time trying to hide the fact that this was Tybee and Savannah was Savannah,” Bass Hampton, the film’s location director, told about 80 residents at Tybee city hall.
The movie features 16-year-old Cyrus, the star of “Hannah Montana,” as a teenage girl struggling with her parents’ divorce who tries to reconnect with her father during a summer at his home in a quiet beach town.
Filming starts Monday on Tybee Island, 12 miles east of Savannah, and is expected to stretch into mid-August.
The Walt Disney Co. had considered making the film in North Carolina, but ultimately chose Georgia because the state offered a better incentive package. Local officials estimate the production will bring $8 million in direct spending to the area during the next two months.
Having Tybee Island’s name on the screen — on signs for a beach festival and emblazoned on police cars and fire trucks — should make for an even bigger payday after the movie hits theaters in 2010, said Diane Schleicher, Tybee’s city manager.
“When the film releases, the impact on the economy here is going to be immense,” Schleicher said.
Still, there will be some drawbacks for the island’s 3,400 residents.
Hampton said filmmakers will spend several days shooting at the island’s fishing pier, which will mean closing the attraction to visitors periodically, and roadblocks will go up around the beach house being used as a location.
Tybee resident Monty Parks, who opened an Internet cafe near the pier a few months ago, said he hopes to sell plenty of lattes to the film crew and gawking tourists.
“If you’re somebody who wants Tybee to stay out of the limelight, you’re going to be broken-hearted,” Parks said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of people here. It’s going to be great for me.”
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More