Woody Allen cancels plans to shoot in Paris

updated 6:28 p.m. ET April 20, 2006

PARIS - France’s film commission is disappointed: Woody Allen won’t shoot his next movie in Paris after all.

Allen has been working on a Paris script, but it turned out to be too ambitious for his budget, the commission said Thursday in a statement.

Instead, he will return to an earlier project set in London, where he shot 2005’s “Match Point.”

“This is obviously bad news for French film networks and professionals, who were already delighted to be able to work with Monsieur Allen,” the Film France commission said in a statement.

A beloved figure in France, the 70-year-old director appeared in a 2003 promotional video to lure American tourists back to the land of champagne. Tourism had dropped during the diplomatic standoff over U.S. plans to invade Iraq.

“I don’t want to have to refer to my French-fried potatoes as freedom fries and I don’t want to have to freedom-kiss my wife when what I really want to do is French-kiss her,” Allen said in the short film produced by the French government.

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