Rather than the usual soundstage, everything was shot on-location, in the heart of the Amazon.
“It's weird, I'm here in the Amazon, and somehow Amazon Studios is releasing the film,” said James
Gray, screenwriter and director. “It seems somehow fitting.”
Mother Nature provided some laughs for the cast and crew.
"The howler monkeys were the coolest thing about the jungle,” said actor Tom Holland, who plays Percy’s son, Jack. “And then they started throwing poo at us, and it got a little annoying.”
And there were some close calls.
"We got caught in a very violent storm, and the producers decided we need to evacuate,” said Charlie Hunnam, who plays Percy Fawcett. “I decided I didn't want to evacuate, that I wanted to keep on filming because I thought it would be spectacular to see that level of storm captured on film. A bolt of lightning hit a tree about 20 feet away from me and knocked me off my feet."
Sienna Miller plays Percy’s wife, Nina, whose role as the family matriarch prevented her from joining the expedition. In real life, Miller struggles with the guilt of being a working mom.
"If I didn't have my creative output in my work, I would be an unhappy person, and that's not good for my daughter either,” Miller said. “She’s here with me now. She comes everywhere. She has a very enriched life. She was on this set, but it's a struggle, and we have to start accepting that it's a shared struggle. As women we've got to let go of that guilt."
Miller's on-screen son, Holland, is the newest actor to take on the "Spiderman" role in the Marvel movies. Holland was in awe of the actor playing his on-screen dad.
"Charlie is the prime example of how you can never work too hard,” Holland said. While I was relaxing at the end of the day, he was working out by the pool. And when I was in “Spiderman,” I would come home from work and go straight to the gym because that's what Charlie did."
For Hunnam, hard work paid off during the filming of The Lost City of Z.
"It was a small price to pay to be able to live my dream of making films of this quality,” Hunnam said.
