Bob Marley. Photo: Eddie Mallin

FILM crews for a new Bob Marley biopic braved the snow this week as they set up a series of shots in and around The Garage music venue behind Highbury Fields.

King Richard ­film­maker Reinaldo Marcus Green is in the director’s chair on the Paramount Pictures shoot, which got under way over the weekend and carried on into the beginning of this week.

Neighbours living near to the filming said they had been given notification about the production and road closures around a month ago.

The film centres on the making of Exodus, the “king of reggae’s” 10th studio album and his first to be recorded in London after the musical legend and his wife Rita survived an assassination attempt at their Jamaican home – sparked by political unrest – and fled to the UK.

Released in 1977, in 1999 it was voted the best album of the 20th century by Time magazine.

Those living along Highbury Fields could have been forgiven for thinking they had been transported to the winter of 1976 as heavy snow lay on the ground and 1970s cars and police vans dotted the road, while extras with big hair and wooden bead necklaces wandered up and down the street waiting for filming to begin.

Posters for Uriah Heap, Iggy Pop and Fleetwood Mac – among many other big stars of the day – had been attached to walls surrounding The Garage music venue, where much of the filming took place.

Locals were in for further excitement on Tuesday evening when a riot scene was filmed outside.

Mr Green told the Guardian that Marley “gave a lot of joy and spread messages of love and peace which are as important as ever today. But we want to show every side of Bob, including his toughness, without sugar-coating anything”.

He added: “I want this to be for people who know and love Bob, and who can still find out things about his life that they didn’t know, as well as introducing him to a new generation.”

Kingsley Ben-Adir, a British actor who has previously starred in Birmingham crime dynasty drama Peaky Blinders, plays Marley.

Jonathan Green, a resident in Highbury for 25 years, said he was “very excited” about the filming, adding: “It will be amazing – who doesn’t like Bob Marley? I hope they do him justice. It’s quite a starry cast. I live round the corner and it’s just at the end of my road so I would see them filming as I went to the gym. It was a bit of fun to see it happening – seeing the posters go up and the old police cars.”

Not all neighbours were happy about the filming though. One man, who did not want to be named, said the loss of parking spaces was a “nuisance” and complained he had to park his car half a mile away.

While the filming centres on the action at The Garage, Marley also visited other parts of the borough during his time in London.

As part of the Exodus tour, in June 1977 Marley and his band the Wailers performed at the former Rainbow Theatre in Seven Sisters Road, N4.

The superstar only managed four of a scheduled six nights at the Finsbury Park venue after injuring his toe in a friendly football match earlier that year, and was forced to cancel the rest of the tour.

The toe injury eventually led to the discovery of the cancer that killed him. In 1978 Marley filmed the video for Is This Love – which featured supermodel Naomi Campbell as a youngster – at the Keskidee Centre in Gifford Street in King’s Cross.

The centre’s history as Britain’s first black-led arts institution was commemorated in a plaque unveiled in 2011 but just a year later the buildin