Details on the Rome Shoot for Spectre

Our friends at Italian site Bad Taste have tipped us off to some juicy details of the Rome shoot for Spectre – the 24th entry in EON Productions, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Sony Pictures Entertainment’s James Bond franchise – in which Daniel Craig and Monica Bellucci will burn rubber and production dollars.

UPDATE: The production has provided a look at Craig and Bellucci on location, which you can check out in the gallery below!

The two stars had a meeting today with Ignazio Marino, the Mayor of Rome, to talk details of the action in Italy’s capital city, which will begin lensing March 8. It will apparently involve a spectacular car chase in Via Nomentana, from viale Gorizia to Porta Pia. Filming will commence from 9pm to 6am, with traffic blocked during the night shoot for safety reasons. Residents will only be able to come home at pre-arranged time.

There will be another chase on the Lungotevere that will finish with James Bond’s car falling in the river, with Craig’s Agent 007 to be rescued by a helicopter. Additional chase footage will be shot in via Barberini, via Quattro Fontane and via Nazionale, as well as other locations such as Borgo Pio, the Milvian Bridge and all the streets and alleys around Piazza Navona.

These driving scenes will likely be easier on Craig’s knee, which sustained injury during an accident earlier this month while filming Pinewood studios in Buckinghamshire, UK. Spectre is rumored to be the most expensive entry in the Bond franchise yet, so producers are no doubt looking to keep their star in tip-top shape.

In the movie, a cryptic message from Bond’s past sends him on a trail to uncover a sinister organization. While M battles political forces to keep the secret service alive, Bond peels back the layers of deceit to reveal the terrible truth behind SPECTRE.

SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion), as Bond fans know, is a fictional global terrorist organization featured in Ian Fleming’s novels, as well as the films and video games based on those novels. The organization was led by the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, although the cast is definitely playing it coy about whether or not Blofeld will actually appear in the new film.

Directed by the Academy Award-winning Sam Mendes (Skyfall), Spectre stars Daniel Craig, Ben Wishaw, Naomie Harris, Ralph Fiennes, Christoph Waltz, Monica Bellucci, David Bautista, Léa Seydoux, Andrew Scott and Rory Kinnear. Written by John Logan and Neal Purvis & Robert Wade, the movie hits theaters on November 6, 2015.