NEW YORK • The makers of a movie about the Boston Marathon bombing have scrapped plans to film the traumatic shootout scenes on location in Watertown, Massachusetts because the town has decided not to cooperate.

The movie, Patriot's Day from CBS Films, stars Mark Wahlberg and J.K. Simmons and is being directed by Peter Berg.

The film-makers had sent residents a flier and gone door to door seeking permission for the re-creation, which would include simulated gunfire until midnight for several nights.

Some residents told news organisations that they had no problem with the filming, but others were not interested.

The film company said that 88 per cent of the residents of Laurel Street, the site of the shootout, had favoured filming there, but the town decided that the concerns outweighed any benefits.

The company is now scouting other locations in the Boston area for the shootout scenes, a spokesman said. The production is still seeking permission to film at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a student when he and his brother bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013 killing three people.

NEW YORK TIMES