Flip Brothers Studio Tour
By RS
Welcome to the official Studio Tour for the Flip Brothers Studio. The sprawling studio is located on the north western side of Hollywood and overlooks the ocean and city. The lot is nestled next to the Channel One network TV building and the Hollywood Times office building.
As you enter the huge gates to the studio you can notice Flip Brother’s Pizza on one side of you and Rico’s Cool Cars on the other side. But neither is the focus of this article.
“Welcome to Flip Brothers Studio Lot.”
Upon entering the parking garage you’ll notice a huge mural of movie posters from the Studio painted by Alex Ross, including in the mix is Ritchie Steven’s “Of Love and Shadows”, “Going Home”, “Batman”, “Monster in NY” and a freshly painted “Green Lantern”. The guard leads you to the main studio office entrance where you are greeted by life sized statues of the Predator and the Crow. Both rendered perfectly and are almost too life like.
As you move down a long hallway, you’ll notice that one side has painting from the old sci-fi TV show Sliders and the opposite side has paintings from the classic video game series Mortal Kombat, both of which are properties owned by co-Studio Head Ritchie Steven. As you move down this hallway you find the development offices for the Flip Studio adaptations. Through rather large windows you can spot concept art for an Evil Dead 4 AND an Evil Dead TV Series, neither of which have yet been given the greenlight. The next office is shared between True Crime 2 and The Getaway 2. On any particular day you can spot actors from the two films that are helping to develop the storylines for the sequels.
Moving forward even more you are taken to a bus, where the tour continues through some of the studio built sets and back lots that are currently being used. With narration by Bruce Campbell and Ted Raimi on a video monitor, we learn about some of the history of the studio and see some clips of the studios early pictures, “The Paw”, “Going Home” and “Crimson Moon”, Bruce jokes that we can forget about that one… that he tries to every night.
The first permanent set you notice is a huge spaceship that you might remember from David Lynch’s “Near and Dear”. Ted jokes that RS will not let anyone take it down because he wants to reuse it on a Star Wars flick. Like George would ever let that happen.
The city block is a classic lot and has been used in numerous Flip Brothers films, including “The Paw” with Natalie Portman, “Magi” with Chuck Norris and William Shatner, “Of Love and Shadows” with Sean Connery and Pedro’s “Blind Money” to name a few. The city doubles for New York, Los Angeles and many fictional DC Comics cities. As we move towards the east part of the city blocks, we can see Arnold’s double in his Redwing costume for Christopher Harmer’s untitled superhero epic. Bruce mentions that he has a part in it. A small part. Ted Raimi makes a joke that I will not repeat here and is slugged by the cult hero.
The next big attraction we see is the outside of the church from “Of Love and Shadows” that is being worked on to be a central location in Mattrick’s “The Crow”. If you come on a lucky day you can actually see Mattricks and PJ arguing over the film. Ok, that’s a lie. PJ doesn’t talk. But if he did, they would probably argue about the film.
Next we went into this special built part of one of the studio buildings. This is by far the coolest part of the tour. Trust me on it. Inside the studio, the lights were dimmed and the camera was rolling… on HELLBLAZER 2! The scene was a seance where a trio of corpses were telling a creepy story. Can’t really hear what they were saying, but I think one corpse mouthed the workds “Jack the Ripper”! Paul Bettany (Constantine) and Anthony Hopkins (Sir Peter Marston) were both on hand for the scene and standing by for their close-ups. Paul popped us the birdie as a joke. Both were in costume and looked very badass!
This was the last part of the actual set tour, but then you are allowed to walk through a Studio “museum” of sorts. Costumes from “Green Lantern” and the upcoming “Superman” are on display along with “Quickie” and “Ultra Slow” costumes and Clint Power’s jacket. There is a huge display of different weapons, guns from “True Crime”, a bloody chainsaw from “Crimson Moon”, to name a few. Dozens of different squirrels are perched all over the room, reflecting different characters in the Bruce Campbell cult horror film, “Night of the Squirrels”.
And that’s the end of the tour. Depending on when you visit throughout the year, new sets may be built and new movies may be filming. Thanks for coming!
