Shooting began in the Asian city last week for “Batman: The Dark Knight,” marking the first time the story takes place outside Gotham in the film franchise’s history.

Hong Kong residents are completely under the Batman spell. Last week’s noise complaints of low-flying helicopters doing aerial shots and environmental concerns over lights in buildings being kept on overnight for filming were quickly forgotten as hundreds of star-struck citizens surrounded the areas of the shoots and local news gave daily reports on its progress.

Philip Lee, whose production company October Pictures is handling the local shoot, told Daily Variety that the overall schedule for the shoot in Hong Kong is eight days, with the cast taking part in approximately three days of the shoot. Lee also said there is a possibility that part of the shoot will take place at the Macau Airport.

The Dark Knight, the latest Batman movie, being shot in Hong Kong this week, the masked idol was initially supposed to jump from a plane into the waters of Hong Kong’s iconic Victoria Harbor. Yet the scene was axed after producers discovered that conditions in the channel are potentially hazardous to Batman even when wearing his seamless bat outfit. The news pointed up the Hong Kong government’s failure to tackle the city’s worsening pollution problems, which have been strongly criticized by international companies and foreign expatriates for years.

The plan was for Batman to be seen jumping into the water and then climbing up some bamboo, or something similar, onto a pier,” the South China Morning Post quoted an unnamed official with the production house as saying. “But when they checked a water sample, they found all sorts of things, salmonella and tuberculosis, so it was canceled. Now the action will cut to inside a building.”

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