As a world-leading filming destination, the UK is ready, willing and able to meet the demands of blockbuster projects shooting within its nations and regions.
The British Film Commission, working with its extensive UK-wide network, can help source anything from a non-tidal dock large enough to accommodate a boat with 200 actors aboard to a London street that can be dressed as a post-apocalyptic rubble strewn, car crushed wasteland for a weekend — as well, of course, as providing help and advice on everything from crews to tax credits.
Here are five recent blockbuster projects that have made the most of what the UK has to offer.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
UK locations include: Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden; Watford, Princess Helena College, Hitchin and Chorleywood, Hertfordshire; West Wycombe Estate, Buckinghamshire
Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which opened with $145m worldwide on September 4, is a sequel to Burton’s 1988 fantasy horror comedy about a recently-deceased couple who contact a bio-exorcist to scare away their home’s new inhabitants. Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara reprise their roles from the original, and are joined by Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe.
Production for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice began on May 10 2023, with all interior scenes being shot at Warner Bros, Studios, Leavesden. Other locations include the imposing Princess Helena College — a former boarding school which closed to students in 2021 — in the Hertfordshire village of Preston, and Buckinghamshire’s sprawling West Wycombe Estate, which was used for the pivotal funeral scene.
Deadpool & Wolverine
UK locations include: Pinewood Studios; Bovingdon Airfield Studios; Wormsley Estate and Holkham Beach, Norfolk; Pitstone Hill & Pitstone Quarry, Buckinghamshire; Ashridge Estate, Hertfordshire
Shawn Levy directs a third outing of the Ryan Reynolds-starring superhero dark comedy, the first in the franchise since Disney acquired Fox. Deadpool & Wolverine, which was released in July and has grossed over $1.5bn globally at the time of writing, sees Reynolds’ Deadpool officially joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, uniting with Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine to deliver dark anarchic laughs and action.
Filming kicked off in the UK in May 2023 initially at Pinewood Studios, Disney’s long lease studio base; Bovingdon Airfield Studios, a former military air base in Hertfordshire, also hosted the production. Other locations included Norfolk’s Holkham Beach, an unspoilt, miles-long stretch of sandy beach bordered by dunes and a pine forest; Piston Hill and Piston Quarry, the latter a 25-acre site of social interest in Buckinghamshire which doubled for the film’s dystopian wasteland The Void.
Kraven The Hunter
UK locations include: Winnersh Studios, Berkshire; Dorking, Surrey
Directed by JC Chandor. Kraven The Hunter, which is due for release by Sony on December 13, is an origins story starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Spider-Man’s eventual nemesis alongside Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola and Russell Crowe.
“When we were first approached by Sony/ Columbia to make Kraven, the UK film industry was full to bursting with productions both large and small,” says unit production manager Sam Breckman, an veteran UK producer. “We were fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to secure stage space at an established studio, and one of the recently erected temporary spaces.” Kraven’s main unit began filming in March 2022 for 61 days, spending 12 of those in Winnersh Studios — a space which the BFC introduced to Sony — while the second unit spent 12 out of 33 days on stages.
Breckman then turned his attention to securing the right locations within a designated travel time from the production’s stage spaces. Woods throughout the Home Counties provided “epic locations” that allowed the film to recreate the numerous Eastern European backdrops that the script required.
That came with its challenges. When filming a scene supposedly set in a jungle camp, a helicopter took off next to a tented encampment — and sent furniture and tents flying everywhere. “No one was hurt and we managed to complete the scene as the filming focused on the helicopter, and not the tent and its furniture!” Breckman recalls. The experienced UK crew base was also well used to the challenges of filming in inclement weather. “We managed, on the whole, to successfully navigate the downpours with some strategically placed interior scenes shot on our stages,” Breckman says. “This required a huge effort by our design, construction and props teams to get our stage sets ready with very little notice.”
Speak No Evil
UK locations include: Gloucester and The Forest Of Dean, Gloucestershire; Devon
Directed by James Watkins, Speak No Evil is a remake of the Danish horror of the same name and stars James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy. The Blumhouse-produced film centres on a dream holiday that turns into a living nightmare when an American couple and their daughter spend the weekend at a British family’s idyllic country estate.
The Universal-distributed film shot on location throughout the UK from late May 2023, with sites including a red brick mansion in Chelsea, London; the Malvern Hills between the cities of Birmingham and Bristol, and a farm in the Forest of Dean on the border of England and Wales. The production also dispatched a drone unit on the coast of Devon.
Recalls Jonny Romano, Blumhouse’s SVP of production, “our quirkiest challenge was warning the neighbours that they didn’t need to call the police or fire service if they saw a fireball or heard a loud bang coming from the farm!”
A Quiet Place: Day One
UK locations include: Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden; Bovingdon Airfield Studios; London
A Quiet Place: Day One marks the third instalment in the action-horror franchise, serving as both a spin-off and prequel. Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski, based on a story he conceived with the original film’s writer/director John Krasinski, it stars Lupita Nyong’o as a terminally ill woman in New York during the early stages of an invasion by bloodthirsty blind killer aliens with super-hearing.
The Paramount-distributed film shot almost entirely in the UK using both locations and studio sets. In London, the production utilised a Greek Orthodox Church in Bayswater, an East End street, Canary Wharf and a non-tidal dock.
UK based supervising location manager Ben Bailey and production designer Simon Bowles arrived on Day One fresh from Apartment 7A, the Paramount+ Rosemary’s Baby prequel that had required them to make London look like 1960s New York. “A Quiet Place was New York again, but a very different one,” notes Bailey.
They created a NYC underground jazz club in a London pub, and dressed a whole street in the East End with a blue screen at one end. “We got the street Friday night. We had to prep it, shoot it, and then reinstate it by six o’clock on Monday morning,” says Bailey. “We made it into an absolute war zone, rubble everywhere, smashed cars, dust all over. Loads of extras. It was like a military operation.”
The production also turned the Clapham Grand venue into a Chinatown theatre, and a key scene was filmed on a dry-docked boat. The production also took over Canary Wharf for a weekend, the business district standing in as NY’s Midtown. Canary Wharf Group film office run by Lesley Johnson, was instrumental to the filming. “We were the first crew to do a road closure at Canary Wharf,” Bailey says. “We’ve always got to be mindful about how we facilitate the production, because we want to go back to these places again and again and again.”
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