New Scenes Filmed in L.A. Said to Replace Theater Shoot-Up in \'Gangster Squad\'

By MICHAEL CIEPLY

LOS ANGELES - In the heat of another too-hot afternoon, this city's Chinatown - the real one, not the myth explored in the movie with that name - was littered on Wednesday with the repercussions from last month's theater shootings in Aurora, Colo.

A parking lot on the site of Little Joe's, an Italian restaurant that predates the Chinese presence, was clogged with tents, trucks and trailers. They formed the base camp for a film production that was code-named “Slapsy.”

Across Broadway, just past the chipped and fading Gate of Maternal Virtues, Chinatown's central plaza was hung with Christmas tinsel.

A black Plymouth sedan, circa 1949, was parked outside an establishment with a sign called the Dragon Club. It appeared to be a hastily constructed movie-set bar. Nearby, walkways were blocked by a couple of antique trucks and an ominous-looking Cadillac with fat whitewall tires.

All of it, a security guard was telling some puzzled tourists, belonged to a picture called “Gangster Squad,” with stars including Sean Penn and Ryan Gosling. “They have to change some scenes,” the guard explained, because of the people who were killed watching “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Indeed, Warner Brothers, which released “The Dark Knight Rises,” pulled its trailer for “Gangster Squad,” which is about the bloody pursuit of the Los Angeles crime kingpin Mickey Cohen, because of a scene in the movie in which men shoot up the crowd in a theater. The film's opening was then delayed from Sept. 7 until Jan. 11.

And for the last several nights, cast and crew have been reassembled for an elaborate reshoot that will presumably eliminate the theater violence - and which has certainly turned Chinatown on its end.

Whether the Aurora shooting, which left 12 people dead, have worked any deeper changes in the film business remains very much open t o doubt.

One thing is clear: ticket sales have fallen. According to weekly reports from Hollywood.com, the Top 12 films have underperformed the Top 12 from equivalent weekends last year for three of the last four weeks.

Michael Cieply covers the film industry from the Los Angeles bureau.