[I'm pasting the whole thing below as the Sun stories don't seem to stay up for very long]:
LOWELL -- Window grids cast shadows on the exposed brick walls of a loft above the American Textile History Museum as Robert Moresco looks out over the Acre neighborhood past a downtown canal at sunset.
In the eyes of the two-time Academy Award-winning movie producer, the loft space defined by the century-old mill's original ceiling beams and the gleaming granite kitchen countertop signifies what Lowell stands for.
"It's a brand-new Boston with all the old underpinnings," Moresco said.
A perfect marriage between old and new is what Moresco has been looking for in locations for the shooting of the upcoming movie based on an international espionage novel. The Residences at the American Textile Museum on Dutton Street delivers that for him.
"This is a perfect fit for a single ex-cop," Elaine Rogers, a film producer, said of the movie's main character, who would live in the loft. "It has the right feel."
Hollywood is returning to Lowell.
Led by Moresco, Rogers and Lowell's own movie producer, Chris Byers, a production crew visited the Mill City on Tuesday on a hunt for ideal spots to shoot a new movie. The film doesn't have a name just yet. Based on Deadly Codes: A Gallagher Novel, a thriller authored by Bedford dentist Joseph O'Donnell, the conspiracy-filled story that centers around a Boston private eye is expected to be an attention-grabber. The crew is eyeing the spacious lofts that overlook the western edge of the downtown as
The American Textile History Museum building, which houses the Residences, a 45-unit luxury condo complex, along with the museum and The Sun downstairs, is a stone's throw away from the cobblestone-paved downtown that has provided scenes for two recent Hollywood movies. In 2009, the shooting of Ricky Gervais' movie, The Invention of Lying, featuring Jennifer Garner and some other stars, drew crowds outside The Dubliner, a Market Street pub used for the shooting. The Fighter, the Oscar-winning movie about Lowell boxer Micky Ward, also incorporated many of the city's hangouts, including the Owl Diner and the West End Gym.
In case of the Deadly Codes project, Moresco said he wants to combine Boston's cityscapes with scenes from one of its "underbelly" towns like Lowell. The former industrial mill featuring the oversized windows not only has the right ambiance but should also help stir imagination for Moresco, who is writing the movie script from the book, Byers said.
"Bobby is a phenomenal writer," Byers said of Moresco, whose credit includes such Academy Award winning films as Crash and Million Dollar Baby. "He keeps it moving and exciting all the time."
Byers hopes the Deadly Codes project will help boost his hometown's new identity as a destination for movie productions.
"My whole goal is to shoot a film from start to finish" in Lowell, said Byers of New England Capitol Studio, who is involved in the project to build a 630,000-square-foot movie studio in Devens.
Deadly Codes is a second book written by O'Donnell, an associate clinical professor of Tufts University School of Dental Medicine, who runs a dental office in Winchester and began writing novels in recent years. The movie project came about when his family member showed the book to an actor friend. Before he knew it, O'Donnell was sitting down with Rogers, an entertainment lawyer with an office in Boston, and a few others to go over a preliminary movie script. Once Byers became involved, so did Moresco. He never expected to see his fiction on a big screen, said O'Donnell as he toured the lofts of Ed Cain, owner of Candlewick Development LLC, which is developing a part of The Residences.
