Not all television shows end as decided. Some end abruptly for various reasons, where budget is the most common reason. The American comedy-drama called ‘Las Vegas’ was one of them. It was a popular show with five seasons, and the first one got aired on 22 September 2003. However, it got canceled on 15 February 2008.
The TV Show, ‘Las Vegas’ is about the employees of a fictional hotel and casino named Montecito. They had to deal with valet parking, casino security, customer service, and other day-to-day challenges.
The filming of the pilot episode started in March 2003, and the show makers ended up paying $5 million. It is how it came to be the most expensive pilot episode for NBC. Moreover, the channel had to pay a penalty as the show lacked decency, and some moments showed nudity. The show makers agree that despite being a high-budget show, it failed due to a lack of promotion and a few wrong episodes.
The ratings of the show declined, and two main characters got replaced. Thus, the show ended abruptly with a ‘To Be Continued’ statement written at the end of the final episode leaving the audience furious.
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Where Was The TV Show Las Vegas Filmed?
The Pilot Episode
The pilot episode began in the Las Vegas Valley on 17 March 2003. The surveillance room was set in a warehouse, and a few other shorts in the Fremont Street Experience and the Mandalay Bay resort. The cost of filming the pilot episode reached $5 million by this time. As the series progressed, the cost of producing every episode increased from $2.3 million to $2.7 million.
The First Season
A few filming locations of the series are in Las Vegas, while the remaining are in California. Talking about California, the completely modernized Culver Studios primarily got used for filming. Meanwhile, the writers visited Las Vegas to dive deeper into the story. The production team built sets according to the filming requirements for the first season, except for the pilot episode.
The 20,000 sq ft casino set and the overall Montecito resort got set on the Culver Studios, which have eight sets. The remaining sets got used as surveillance room, lift, hotel rooms, hallways, and the dance club. A hotel and casino located in Henderson (Nevada) called Green Valley Ranch was also used to depict Montecito.
The first season was financially exhausting for the production team. So, the team made a complete blackout to create a murder investigation scene. It is how the production team made all characters stay on the Montecito set in the last episode to reduce the production costs. Meanwhile, the team used CGI to change the location’s actual signage to that of Montecito.
The Second Season
As those sets were still not enough, some Montecito scenes got filmed at the resort’s wave pool and the casino at the Mandalay Bay in the second season. Meanwhile, the audiences could see one more set dedicated to the coffee shop in that season.
The Third Season
The filming locations for Montecito kept changing, to a varying limit, with every season. Thus, the third season got a new 40,000 sq ft three-story set with six sound stages. To cope with the higher production cost this time, the production team featured various brands in the episodes.
Last-moment cast departures decreased production costs but pissed the audiences off as they could not see their favorite actors in the series anymore. The Las Vegas set used for this show was the biggest set used for any TV show ever. The aerial shots of Montecito depict its presence at the corner of Reno Ave. and Giles St, which places it less than a mile away from Mandalay Bay.
The Fourth Season
The production team again had to deal with the overhead of $2 million in the fourth season. The exterior and interior of Montecito got filmed at different locations because the 30-story casino hotel, Luxor Las Vegas, located in Paradise (Nevada), got used to filming the exterior, while the interior shown in the series did not match the actual place.
Meanwhile, the main casino set had 24 table games and 146 slot machines. Caesar’s Palace and The Mirage can be seen from Ed Deline’s office in the second episode of the fourth season. It means the office is located where the Treasure Island is.
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