Production company makes film in NOLA, skips town without paying locals

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NEW ORLEANS - The remake of the 1989 martial arts movie "Kickboxer" wrapped up filming in New Orleans this month, but crew members and local vendors say the production company that hired them skipped town without paying them for weeks of work.

This year the Grinch stole Christmas for 150 crew members and dozens of local vendors who worked on the film "Kickboxer" and say they never got paid.

"I am highly frustrated," says special Effects Coordinator Mike Bisetti. "We have gone through the holidays, I haven't gotten paid, along with all the other people that haven't got paid. It's created an extreme hardship."

Radar Pictures, the production company behind the movie, is owned by media mogul Ted Field. The billionaire is also listed as one of the producers who hire hundreds of movie industry locals to produce the "Kickboxer" scenes filmed in New Orleans.

After their first pay check, crew members say they stopped getting checks and, instead, got excuses.

"They were trying to convince us that is was an oversight, it was a mistake," says Bisetti. "And then they went into the reasons why, which none of us are really concerned about."

Days later the crew showed up for the last day of filming at the old power plant on Tchoupitoulas expecting to finally get their pay checks, but when they were, again, told they were not getting paid the entire film crew staged a walk out.

"The department heads gathered up and had a meeting and said, 'hey look, we are professionals, we don't want them to say we quit on them', so we finished the film," says Earl Woods, who served as the film's chief lighting technician.

An attorney representing the production company then promised to have the checks to crew members by Christmas, but the crew says that was an empty promise too.

"My heart sunk, especially for my crew members, they had some of them in hair and makeup that are single parents, and their child was depending on them," says Woods.

The production office is closed and crew members say the producers have skipped town.

In an email obtained by Eyewitness News, crew members were told just days after they were promised checks by Christmas, that Radar Pictures, "failed to meet the payroll company demands of funding payroll" and that their "paychecks were voided and all timecards had been returned to production".

Crew members say they have since reached out to their unions and the film commission, but no one is helping them get the money they earned. "The people we pay to protect us are conspicuously absent," says Bisetti.

We put in calls to the union representative at Local 478 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, as well as the attorney representing the Ted Field and his production company, but our calls have not been returned.

However, Nicki Celozzi, one of the producers working on the film, sent an email statement late Friday evening saying only that "Radar Films is working on getting everyone paid and made whole".

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