‘Hell on Wheels’ season 4: Some early hints on when filming may begin

We’re going to dive back into some “in case you missed it” scoop over the holidays when it comes to “Hell on Wheels” today, mostly since there are some answers in here to a question that we have been getting for some time: When does production get going on the new season?

Let’s start off here with what is the good news: The show is going to be really kicking off the writing portion of the process this month! Speaking to Crave Online in a recent interview, series star Anson Mount (Cullen Bohannon) made it clear that the writers get to work on scripts in January, but thanks in part to the climate of their filming location, it will be a good while before the cast is able to really start filming scenes:

“We shoot in Alberta which makes it impossible to shoot in the winter, although we did do the teaser of the first episode of last season. We went up for a few days in the winter to shoot and I don’t ever want to do that again. We usually start the season in late April which we’ll probably do again. We get picked up towards the end of the year, they staff the  writers in December, start writing in January so it times up pretty well to be when we’re ready material-wise and when the weather is right.”

When you think about timing here, and comparisons to other series, this seems about right. Most cable dramas tend to start shooting somewhere between four and six months before they premiere, that way the story is mapped out long before viewers ever see the first episode and the cast will have some time available in their schedule to start promoting new episodes. It’s really rather hard to do that when you are having to spend most of your time filming more scenes under the gun, hoping that the editors and the other folks in post have enough days to get things together.