Ko Olina News and Press Releases

Hula Hopes - Honolulu

Why the city needs to look west not east. Honolulu, our top-ranking US city for the third year running, wants to shed its honeymoon hot spot image. The film industry, renewable energy and agriculture are helping transform it into a new Pacific power.

But the film industry is the best example of a creative business model for Honolulu, one that manages to manoeuvre the juxtapositions - geothermal versus volcanoes, nature versus technology, corny stereotype versus genuine Aloha spirit - and then promote all these local assets. At Ko Olina resort, a 20-minute drive from the city, Honolulu Film Office commissioner Walea Constantineau pulls up in her Mini Cooper to meet us outside the set for cult TV series Lost. Already in the first few months of 2010, the show wrapped up its final season after shooting here for six years (the final episode aired on May 24 this year), Disney is shooting the latest in its Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. The Descendants with George Clooney is in the works, as is a South Korean soap opera and a remake of Hawaii Five-O, among many other film and TV projects.

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