LOST promo photo, Season 1. Source: ABC
Fans can’t get enough of it on their television sets, they scour the internet for more of it, and tourists flock to it each and every day. “The island” has them in its grasp – the island of Hawaii, that is. And it’s all because this is where ABC films the wildly successful series LOST.
YMCA's Camp Erdman is quite a distance from the populous city of Oahu, but that doesn’t stop the faithful. "We certainly get more than our fair share of groupies showing up here every day," said Josh Heimowitz, the camp’s executive director.
Ever since the series first aired in September 2004, the show's impact on Hawai'i, where much of it is shot, has been measured in millions of dollars, hundreds of jobs and priceless exposure for the state.
-HonoluluAdvertiser.com
Hawaii is often typecast as a place suitable only for beautiful beaches or dense jungles (think Hawaii Five-O, Magnum PI, Baywatch Hawaii, and Flight 29 Down). LOST changed all that -- creating its own mysterious island in Oahu, and also transforming the native backdrop into convincing reproductions of Australia, Buffalo, Iraq, Korea, Los Angeles, Tunisia, and most recently LAX.
In the five years they have been there, LOST was also a good neighbor:
- Creating student internships;
- Actors making appearances at public school events;
- Hiring seventy-five percent of cast and crew locally;
- Providing steady work for Hawaii's film industry technicians;
- Hiring seven-hundred vendors for Season 5; and
- Cast and crew buying homes & entering their children into the local school system.
The show has been a juggernaut for everyone involved, and the island is grateful. Filming of LOST’s sixth and final season began in late August and will begin airing in January 2010.
"It will end like it began, in an extraordinary, thought-provoking way," said Jack Bender, LOST’s executive producer and director. "It is going to be multilayered and rich."
ABC plans to auction off much of the show's costumes and props, and Heimowitz wants them for an on-location LOST museum. As a tourist attraction driven by reruns, he’s convinced it would be a draw once the show comes to an end.
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