Movie starring Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson to film in Greenwood

Woody Harrelson
Woody Harrelson
Woody Harrelson

GREENWOOD, Mississippi (AP) — Hollywood production crews are planning to turn the former Florewood State Park into an Old West frontier town as movie cameras and movie stars return to Greenwood this fall for work on a feature film.

The movie, “By Way of Helena,” is set to star Liam Hemsworth and Woody Harrelson.

Crews could start work transforming Florewood as early as Monday. Filming is scheduled to take place mostly in September and October.

According to several online industry reports, the movie will follow Hemsworth, an 1880s Texas Ranger, who is dispatched to a mysterious, isolated town to investigate multiple dead bodies that wash up out of the river.

Harrelson reportedly will play Abraham Brant, a town preacher who appears to hold a cultish sway over its residents.

The crumbling buildings at Florewood will be spruced up to serve as a backdrop in the film. The former state park, which closed in 2004, had served as a living history museum of a 1850s Delta cotton plantation. Leflore County took out a 25-year lease on the vacant park from the state in 2007 for $10.

In addition to playing the part of an Old West settlement, Florewood will also serve as a hub and an office base for the production crews preparing for and filming the movie.

The Leflore County Board of Supervisors agreed this week to rent the park to the film’s producers from Aug. 4 to Nov. 4 for $20,000.

Liam Hemsworth
Liam Hemsworth

Hemsworth, a 24-year-old Australian actor, and Harrelson, the 53-year-old former “Cheers” star fresh off a leading role in the HBO series “True Detective,” also co-star in “The Hunger Games” series of movies.

The next installment of that series, “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1,” is set to be released Nov. 21.

Shooting for “By Way of Helena” in Greenwood will be on a tight schedule, with both actors scheduled for pre-release publicity engagements starting in early November.

Leflore County Supervisor Anjuan Brown, whose district includes Florewood, said producers told him that central scenes would be shot at Florewood but that other locations in the area may be used.

Brown and state Senate Tourism Committee Chairwoman Lydia Chassaniol, R-Winona, both said producers had agreed to invest “tens of thousands of dollars” in fixing up and improving the shuttered state park, which has fallen into a state of disarray over the last decade while it sat vacant.

Brown also said the production crews would likely spend “millions of dollars” in the Greenwood area on everything from building materials to dry cleaning, lodging and food.

“They’re talking about bringing an economic shot in the arm for our city and our county,” Brown said. “It’s greatly needed.”

Chassaniol, who along with Brown met with producer Adam Rosenfelt at Florewood last week, said she initially thought the producers were considering shooting the film near Clarksdale but moved very quickly last week to work out a deal to set up shop at Florewood instead.

This would be the third feature film to be heavily shot in the Greenwood area in the past four years.

“The Help,” a box-office and critical success based on Kathryn Stockett’s novel about black Mississippi maids and their relationships with their white employers in the 1960s, was primarily filmed in Greenwood in 2010.

Last year, scenes from James Franco’s “The Sound and the Fury,” his latest adaptation of a William Faulkner novel, were filmed in Carroll County. It is scheduled for release next month.