Star Wars Filmmakers Have Got a Bad Feeling About Drones

“These are not the filming locations you’re looking for…move along.”

OK, so maybe the producers of Star Wars: Episode VIII aren’t using Force commands to discourage peeping video drones from their sets, but drone-hunting drones will be set loose over the film’s shooting location Croatia to patrol the skies for smarmy scene smugglers and rebellious UAVs.

According to fan site Making Star Wars, the city of Dubronik, Croatia will deploy a special team of drone busters tasked with removing any errant UAVs that may seek to get up close and personal with Luke Skywalker. Film producers allocated $4.3 million to the city to hire 600 guards in addition to the drones. It is not known if the drones will use electronic countermeasures such as Dedrone or send out net-deploying drones such as those being used by Japanese police to patrol skies over the Tokyo Marathon.

“During the filming of Star Wars: The Force Awakens there was a problem with people, hobbyists, and the media attempting to film and take photos of the Greenham Common set for the Resistance base. Sometimes they were successful,” writes Making Star Wars editor-in-chief Jason Ward (awesome name, bro – you’re crushing it).

While it’s not yet known what kind of scenes will be filmed in Croatia, Star Wars fan sites (which have proven to be fairly reliable in the rumor department over the years), predict the forested area may stand in for the ruins of Naboo, the planet that unfortunately birthed Jar Jar Binks in Episode One.

Video drones have proven to be the Rebel Force to the Empire that is Hollywood. In 2015, the production company behind HBO’s hit series Game of Thrones declared an area over the show’s set in Northern Ireland to be a drone no-fly zone. Signs erected by a security company on the fence of the filming studios in Titanic Quarter, East Belfast, warned of prosecution for invading the airspace above the studios without permission from the Civil Aviation Authority.

However, in September Irish YouTuber Eye In The Sky captured footage of the series filming in Ballintoy, Northern Ireland. However, the UAV videographer said he stumbled upon the shoot by accident. “Well, I was there to record the harbor — [Game of Thrones] happened to be in the way,” he wrote on his YouTube page.