Glasgow erased from Poor Things as Scots left fuming at Hollywood smash movie

Scots have slammed Hollywood’s deletion of Glasgow from one of the year’s hottest movies. The movie rights for cult novel Poor Things were snapped up by director Yorgos Lanthimos after he was given a tour of Scotland’s biggest city by author Alasdair Gray.Much-loved Gray, who died in 2019, had set large parts of the story in real streets and spaces in his home city, where the bizarre and surreal adventures of heroine Bella Baxter evolved from a flat at 18 Park Circus.But after receiving the green light for a movie, director Lanthimos - whose global hits include The Favourite - opted against a Glasgow setting.

He recently said it would be “totally disingenuous” of him, as a Greek, to produce a cinematic work about Scotland - but the eventual movie was then set in a surreal “steampunk” London.The raunchy black comedy - starring Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe and Mark Ruffalo - has already received wide critical acclaim and is hotly tipped for Oscars success.But a fierce debate has raged over the erasure of Glasgow, which would inevitably have led to a stream of tourists visiting any scenes from the movie.Park Circus resident Martin Kean, 35, said: “I’m disappointed to learn that a book that is all about Glasgow has turned into something else entirely for the big screen.“It would have been great for the local area and for Scotland if such a big movie had stayed faithful to the script and to the intentions of the author.”Banker Martin said it was ironic that Park Circus is already used incessantly by film and TV companies for shoots.He said: “We’ve had Bollywood movies here, they shot dramas like Guilt and Vigil here very recently, so Park Circus would have made an amazing backdrop for Poor Things.