BY JOSEPH KOHUT
Those who watched an explosion on Wyoming Avenue earlier this year may have a chance at seeing it on the big screen sooner rather than later.
“The Virtuoso” — starring Anthony Hopkins, Anson Mount and Abbie Cornish — is in post-production and may be finished by the end of the first-quarter of 2020, the film’s director, Nicholas Stagliano, said.
Once it’s done, it will be submitted to Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the Tribeca Film Festival and South by Southwest, he said.
The film centers on a hit man, played by Mount, who will kill a man from his upper-story perch in the former Dime Bank building at 400 Spruce St.
The hit man aims at a victim in the Hotel Jermyn.
In April, film crews blew up an RV on the 200 block of Wyoming Avenue — the climax of a scene in which a Mercedes-Benz speeds down the street.
A plot synopsis teases a story about how a “lonesome stranger” must track down and kill a hit man to satisfy a debt.
The film’s crew shot other scenes at Doc’s at the Rocks, a Lake Ariel restaurant.
Scranton Mayor Wayne Evans hopes that more movie crews choose Northeast Pennsylvania to shoot their films.
“I always felt that we have such an amazing backdrop for movies,” Evans said. “We have historic buildings, great neighborhoods, great character.”
Contact the writer: jkohut@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9144