Production begins on swimming pigs film, The Sequel

 Original crew of ‘When Pigs Swim™’ visits Staniel Cay and Great Exuma for several days of shooting for new full-length movie, to be released in fall 2018 in tandem with a book on the famed attraction 

The original crew of the award winning film ‘When Pigs Swim™’ reassembled this month to film a full-length sequel that will delve even deeper into a phenomenon that has caught the imagination of people from all around the world. 

Produced by Peter Nicholson, the President of GIV Bahamas Inc., the sequel to ‘When Pigs Swim™’ will pick up where the last film left off. While the first movie served as a kind of “coming out party” for the swimming pigs, this installment will offer an in-depth history of their origins in Exuma and chronicle their remarkable rise to stardom since the original film was released in September 2014.

“The swimming pigs have changed the game in Exuma,” said Nicholson, who is the largest owner of villas at Grand Isle Resort.

“Evidence shows that more than half of the people now  coming to Exuma got here because they heard about the pigs. Of course, this is one of the most beautiful places in the world, so people might find out about us because of the pigs, but what they discover is a world-class string of islands just on the doorstep of North America.”

The film will be once again directed by celebrated Bahamian filmmaker Charlie Smith, who first made a name for himself in The Bahamas when we created and co-hosted the show ‘Electric Air’. The show featured music videos and interviews with A-list celebrities when they visited The Bahamas, including Lenny Kravatz, Beyonce, Puff Daddy and OJ Simpson.

Jeff Todd, Director of Communications for GIV Bahamas, will write the screenplay for the sequel. Todd, who writes under the pen name T.R. Todd, is also releasing a book about the swimming pigs in fall 2018 with Skyhorse Publishing out of New York City. It is envisioned that the film, which will be more than an hour long, will be released around the same time as the book.

Skyhorse Publishing, founded in 2006, is a rapidly growing publishing company with more than 1,000 titles.

It has published the works for four Nobel Prize novelists, and released around 50 New York Times Best Sellers. In 2015,  Skyhorse published ‘The Walk’. By Phillippe Petit, about his daring walk between the NYC World Trade Center Towers, based on the motion picture directed by Robert Zemeckis. In September 2016, it released Snowden, based on the notorious American whistleblower, which was timed with the release of Oliver Stone’s feature film that year.

For the latest film on the pigs, the crew began filming in early January on Staniel Cay, the famed island located close to the original site of the swimming pigs.

The crew interviewed many of the locals on the island and gained unprecedented access to the history on how this attraction developed, as well as how the swimming pigs have changed amid the worldwide fame. After three days of shooting, Smith, Todd and the cameramen headed to the main island of Great Exuma and stayed at Grand Isle Resort to do  additional interviews.

Smith is expected to return to Exuma soon to continue shooting, while also doing a series of interviews in Nassau and the United States.

“We want to show audiences not only how they got on the island, but also the impact it has had on the whole Bahamas,” said Smith. “It is a fun story with incredible visuals. The topic is so original. I think the first film was just an appetizer – this one will be the main course.”

Following the release of the original film in 2014, ‘When Pigs Swim™’ embarked on a film festival tour in The Bahamas and the United States in collaboration with the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism. It was then that the swimming pigs began to pop up on billboards, hotel websites and official marketing materials for the country.  Over the last three years, the attraction has exploded with coverage in most major newspapers and magazines, including spots on popular reality shows, sitcoms, late night talk shows and children’s programs.

At least four additional pig colonies have emerged in The Bahamas in the last few years so tourists visiting from across the country can see the swimming pigs. Tour operators report significant numbers of tourists from all over the world, such as China, Japan, Russia and all over Europe.

“The swimming pigs are global,” said Nicholson. “I think this film will now tell the whole story and really finish the job we started with the first film.”