By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

Zipline like ‘The Hunger Games’ stars at Navitat Canopy Adventures

Posted Thursday, March 1st, 2012 - 1 Comment »
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sweepstakes opens March 7, tours start March 31

ASHEVILLE N.C. – When their characters weren’t fighting for their lives in the outdoor arena staged in the rugged terrain of western North Carolina, many of the cast of the upcoming movie “The Hunger Games” spent some of their downtime flying through the trees at Navitat Canopy Adventures.

The world-class zip line canopy tour located just 20 minutes north of downtown Asheville hosted at least seven of the young stars while they were on location in the area last summer shooting the highly anticipated motion picture opening on March 23.

“We are so excited that so many of ‘The Hunger Games’ cast and crew visited us while they were in the area last summer,” said Abby Burt, Branding & Marketing Leader at NAVITAT, which opens March 31 for the 2012 season.

“We were thrilled to show them the beauty and excitement of our course, and can’t wait to see how the movie showcases the natural beauty of western North Carolina.”

Taking the tour were Josh Hutcherson, who plays Peeta, one of the movie’s lead characters, and Leven Rambin, Jacqueline Emerson, Alexander Ludwig, Dayo Okeniyi, Jack Quaid and Ian Nelson, who play some of Peeta’s competitors known as the Tributes in “The Hunger Games.” Hutcherson liked the experience so much he returned twice more during his stay in Asheville for tours, including the exclusive NAVITAT AT NIGHT tour.

“The Hunger Games,” based on the best-selling novel by Suzanne Collins, tells the story of a post-apocalyptic world in the country of Panem where boys and girls are selected by lottery to compete in an annual televised battle that only one person can survive. The movie was filmed last summer at locations in and around Asheville, Charlotte and Shelby, including the Coleman Boundary portion of the Pisgah National Forest located very near NAVITAT’s 240-acre site in Barnardsville, N.C.

To give fans of “The Hunger Games” a taste of the movie’s locations, NAVITAT has teamed up with the Asheville Convention & Visitors Bureau and US WEEKLY magazine to offer the “Win A Trip to Asheville” sweepstakes. The contest opens March 7 and runs through June 7. Go to www.usmagazine.com/asheville for more details and to enter.

NAVITAT CANOPY ADVENTURES specializes in high-adventure zip line canopy tours, with a heavy focus on educating guests about the natural environment, history and culture of the surrounding area. With locations in Asheville, N.C., and Wrightwood, Calif., NAVITAT has been featured on CNN, Telemundo, “Conan” and in The New York Times. USA TODAY called the Asheville course “One of 10 Great Ziplines in the U.S.” in 2010.

Tours run daily from March 31 through the end of November. Reservations are required. Daytime tour price is $89 per adult, and $79 per youth under age 18. Exclusive “Navitat at Night” tours are offered Saturday evenings at dusk. Nighttime tour price is $99 per person. Visit Navitat Canopy Adventures or call (828) 626-3700 to book your tour.

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Posted in Movie City News, Press Releases | 1 Comment »

One Response to “Zipline like ‘The Hunger Games’ stars at Navitat Canopy Adventures”

  1. Suua P. says:
    March 2, 2012 at 1:31 am

    Nice to see them having some fun.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon