Pietermaritzburg’s newest hotel, the Golden Horse Casino Hotel, a member of the Three Cities Hospitality Group, is hosting an international film crew while they film at the Scottsville Race Course.

The family motion picture, Racing Stripes directed by Frederick Du Chau (Quest for Camelot) and starring Bruce Greenwood, Hayden Panettiere and M Emmet Walsh, commenced principal photography in September.

Racing Stripes is a live-action CGI Tale of a young zebra who dreams of becoming a race horse and winning the Kentucky Open. The film is scripted by David Schmidt, Kirk DeMicco, Mike Samonek and Hillary Seitz. Production services are provided by Moonlighting Filmmakers. The production has recruited hundreds of local crew members and over 1000 extras in the making of the film.

A world class team of animal trainers has been assembled from all over the world, together with animatronics designed and built by John Cox’s Creature Workshop (Babe, George of the Jungle). Extensive visual effects will be supervised by Digiscope (Terminator 3, Rise of the Machines, Independence Day) in Los Angeles.

The picture will be shot over three months on location in the Midlands of KwaZulu-Natal and will be distributed in the USA by Warner Bros Pictures, with world sales outside the US handled by Summit Entertainment.

The production team has booked all 86 rooms of the Golden Horse Casino Hotel, which enjoys high average occupancy rates resulting from its proximity to the casino.

Carlos Leite-Ferraz, Marketing Director: Three Cities, says the Group’s properties are enjoying increasing usage by the film industry, in terms of both accommodation and location. “I believe it is because of the fact that we have such a range of diverse, unique properties within our portfolio, which is a reflection of one of our core values – that of Diversity, which refers to people and products."