The Namibian desert is the shooting location of the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road

• -26.22227.891 Soweto in Johannesburg. District 9 was filmed in South Africa in the townships of Soweto, though the actual area they filmed in was set to be demolished (that's why they were able to blow up parts of it for the film). 

• 33.5426399.9668062 Matmata (Tunisia). Scenes of the desert planet Tatooine in a number of Star Wars films were filmed here. Also see the nearby town of Tataouine, where a little filming was also done. 

See also: Nordic Noir

• 59.33318.0663 Stockholm, Sweden. The setting of many films, including the Millennium series, the Martin Beck franchise, and Let the Right One In. See Stockholm in fiction. 
• 55.416713.83334 Ystad, Sweden. Home of Detective Wallander. 
• 55.676212.56755 Copenhagen, Denmark. Denmark's capital is known for its diverse architecture (including a 21st century waterfront), and is the location of crime stories, such as the Pusher series, The Killing, and The Bridge. 

• 55.3986610.39062 Hans Christian Andersen Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark. A museum dedicated to the city's most famous son, author and poet Hans Christian Andersen, most famous for his fairy tales and in particular The Ugly Duckling and the Little Mermaid. Part of the museum is located in the house where Andersen was supposedly born (though he would never confirm it). The impressive collection is mainly documents from his life and times, period furniture, and many drawings and paper clippings he is famous for at home. 
• 60.473222.00513 Moomin World, Naantali, Finland. One of Finland's most popular theme parks, dedicated to Tove Jansson's lovable Moomin characters.  

• 47.813.056 Salzburg, Austria. Home of the classic musical Sound of Music, though most locals and most Austrians have never heard of it. 
• Görlitz is one of the few cities in Central Europe with an old town that looks convincingly "pre World War II" and as such many movies set in that era have been made here since the 1990s.
• Munich is home to the Bavaria Film Studios where both German and international films have been shot. Also, probably half of the many German crime drama series take place in Munich.
• Babelsberg, a suburb of Berlin and administratively part of Potsdam also has film studios where, among others, one of the longest running German soap operas ("Gute Zeiten schlechte Zeiten" aka GZSZ) is shot.
• 49.79328.66844 Castle Frankenstein (Darmstadt). It is a hilltop castle near Darmstadt in Mühltal. The castle is first mentioned in the records in the year 948, and construction of the castle began in the 13th century. It was owned by the Barons von Frankenstein who owned most of the surrounding land until 1662, when the Baron of that time sold the property to the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt. There have been claims that the castle may have inspired the Mary Shelley novel, Frankenstein. While Shelley is known to have travelled through this area in 1814, historical scholars believe that she did not visit this castle. There are special dinners for Halloween and for other occasions. It is also possible to hike up to the castle. 
• The scenery of Switzerland has been used in many Indian movies of the past 50 years, with the mountains, forests and lakes serving as the background for many songs, scenes and even entire films. For example, Dilwale Dilwale Le Jaayenge (DDLJ), the famous film commonly cited as inspiring Switzerland as the premier destination for Indian movie shoots, had scenes shot in Gstaad and Saanen, with other movies quickly following suit. The soaring peaks and small towns on the Bernese Highlands make the region particularly popular for filmmakers and tourists alike.

• London: See Literary London for complete coverage.
  • While the James Bond series have been filmed all around the world, all of them also feature London — at the very least the MI6 headquarters. Also, countless other British and non-British movies and tv-series take place and have been filmed in London.

• Braveheart was recorded in Scotland (Glencoe, Stirling, Loch Leven and Glen Nevis) as well as Ireland.
• Game of Thrones was shot mainly around Belfast.
• The BBC equivalent of that one rock in Southern California (see below) is Harriet Hole in Dinorwic Slate Quarry in Wales, where according to one probably apocryphal account two series were shot at the same time without either production knowing of the other, thus the two got in the way of each other.

• Stratford-upon-Avon has five sites closely associated with Shakespeare. A combi-ticket (called "The Full Story") is best value and they can all be seen in the course of an afternoon. Three are central: Shakespeare's birthplace on Henley Street is the obvious starting point. In later life he bought a house at New Place - it's long been demolished, but you visit to see the garden there, and the adjoining Nash's House where his grand-daughter Elizabeth lived. His daughter Susanna married Dr John Hall, and Hall's Croft was their house. A mile west in the hamlet of Shottery is Anne Hathaway's Cottage, where she grew up before marrying Shakespeare. Three miles west in Wilmcote is Mary Arden's Farm, childhood home of Shakespeare's mother. His plays are regularly performed at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in the centre of Stratford.

• 52.91483-4.097265 Portmeirion Village (Portmeirion is 1 ½ miles south of Porthmadog). Portmeirion was created by the architect Clough Williams-Ellis from 1925 to 1976. The location of the cult 1960s TV series The Prisoner. It was also a stand-in for 15th-century Italy in Doctor Who: The Masque of Mandragora. 
• 53.3837-1.46566 The National Videogame Museum, Sheffield, United Kingdom. Not to be confused with the other National Videogame Museum in Frisco, Texas. 

• Paris, one of the world's most prominent cities, has been the backdrop of many films, both French and international. It was also in Paris the world's first public movie screening took place in 1895.
  • 48.8892.334757 Boris Lumé Boulangerie (Paris, France). A traditional bakery, located in the Montmartre region of Paris, which became famous by being portrayed as the home of Marinette and her family in the popular animated series Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir (updated Jan 2024)
  • 48.8455282.3443618 Boulangerie Moderne (Paris, France). This typically Parisian bakery became famous thanks to the first season of the Netflix series Emily in Paris. (updated Jan 2024)
  • 48.8848892.3336119 Café de Deux Moulins (Paris, France), ☏ +33 142549050. A traditional French café, located in the Montmartre region, in Paris, which became famous for being the location of the French film Amélie. (updated Jan 2024)

• What does a fictional Apache chief that was dreamed up by someone from Radebeul, Saxony have to do with Croatia? Well, when the works of Karl May about Old Shatterhand, Winnetou and all the others were put to film by German companies, they found that (then) Yugoslavia was much cheaper than the actual Llano Estancado and people in their target audience would neither notice or care, so the site of Winnetou's death is indeed to be found in Croatia, Trogir looks a lot like the Santa Fe of the third movie and when going through Plitvice Lakes National Park you might find the heroes of your youth come back to life. To add yet another wrinkle, the very successful early 21st century parody on the Karl May movies "Der Schuh des Manitu" ("The shoe of Manitou") was shot in neither the Balkans nor North America but instead in Spain.

• -37.8588145.1727 Melbourne/Box Hill and Glen Waverley, Victoria. The classic Australian soap opera, Neighbours, was set in a small cul-de-sac in Vermont South, in Melbourne's south-east. 
• -33.806151.29488 Sydney/Manly. The classic Australian TV series, Out of the Blue, fully filmed in Manly. 
• Sydney is also home to Fox Studios Australia, the largest film production facility in Australia.

• New Zealand: Famous for the Lord of the Rings franchise.
  • Matamata – the set of Hobbiton is still here and can be visited
  • Tongariro National Park – the location of some scenes, such as Mordor
  • Queenstown – another location, and has Lord of the Rings tours
  • Wellington – home to Weta Studios, the film studio that made the films, as well many of the filming locations. Many companies conduct Lord of the Rings tours to the various filming locations.

• The seaside town of Acapulco is where some episodes of the Mexican TV series El Chavo del Ocho and El Chapulín Colorado were recorded in the 1970s.
• Puerto Vallarta is famed for the filming of the Night of the Iguana in 1963 and later also the filming locations of Herbie goes Bananas (1980); Predator (1987) among other movies.

16.859499-99.873610 Hotel Emporio Acapulco (Acapulco, Guerrero). Two episodes of the Mexican TV series El Chavo del Ocho and one episode of El Chapulín Colorado were recorded inside this hotel in the Mexican city of Acapulco in 1977. The destination has become very popular with tourists from Hispanic America and Brazil. (updated Jan 2020)

The fiction of the Old West is set all across the western United States - shooting locations of Western movies often included places far away from the US, for monetary or political reasons.

• Colorado Springs, Colorado — The Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station was the location of the Terran stargate! The stargate is located underneath the former North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) headquarters.
• Devils Tower National Monument, Wyoming — Made famous in Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a site of first contact, transmitted psychically to abduction victims.

California

[edit]

In California, they don't throw their garbage away - they make it into TV shows. – Woody Allen

California in general has been (and continues to be) used for many films given that it is the center of the American mainstream film industry and offers a wide variety of different landscapes that can be used to represent different environments; for example, one rock in Southern California has reportedly been used as a backdrop in dozens of incredibly varied movies.

• Los Angeles is quite arguably the greatest place in the world for cinema tourism, being the home to Hollywood and the backdrop for countless movies; so many that it would be absurd to try and list even just the most famous ones here. Besides the touristy district of Hollywood, with its star-lined Walk of Fame, numerous old theaters and iconic signs, most of the active film and television studios are located in adjacent communities, such as Burbank, the home of Warner Brothers, Disney, and NBC-Universal, Century City, headquarters of 20th Century Fox, Culver City with its historic film studios, and Fairfax, home to CBS' main television studio. Many of these studios offer tours and with careful planning it is possible to obtain tickets to a taping of a television show. The Los Angeles area is also home to theme parks such as Universal Studios and Disneyland, both large-scale celebrations of their company's respective films. Throughout the Greater Los Angeles area a number of private homes, (non-film) businesses, schools, college campuses, malls, hospitals and parks have been used as settings or backdrops for various movies and television programs while what went on inside may have been filmed inside these buildings, back at the studio or at another location. An example is Torrance High School which served as the fictional "West Beverly High School" for the TV Series Beverly Hills 90210 and from 2008 to 2013 as "Ulysses S. Grant High School" in The Secret Life of the American Teenager among other movies such as The Wild Life, Not Another Teen Movie, Whatever It Takes, Cursed, Wild Things 3, and Bruce Almighty. A lot of these settings including this high school and many private homes used in movie and TV shoots are at most viewable from the street and cannot be visited by the public.

• The Bradbury Building in downtown LA is an iconic piece of Victorian architecture that's been used in many films, including Blade Runner and The Artist.
• 34.043974-118.93503511 Leo Carrillo Beach. Movies filmed here include Grease, Gidget, 1984's The Karate Kid, The Craft, Point Break, The Usual Suspects, Inception, and Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus, and in the first season's opening scene of episode 1 of The Rockford Files. (updated Oct 2015)
• Vazquez Rocks, Agua Dulce. Iconic to the point of cliche, dramatic sandstone formations seen in hundreds of TV shows, movies, commercials, and music videos. Particularly featured in Science Fiction and Western films and TV, though in their first cinematic appearance they represented Tibet. 
• 34.0201-118.829312 Zuma Beach and 34.0044-118.81113 Westward Beach near 34.002-118.806814 Point Dume in Malibu have been the filming locations for numerous movies and TV programs such as Planet of the Apes, I Dream of Jeannie, D-Day 6th of June (1956); D-Day Battle of Omaha Beach (2019); Iron Man Parts 1-3, Fast & Furious, Lucifer, Star Trek Enterprise-Earth Beach, Knight and Day,, etc. The nearby 34.096463-118.74648515 Malibu State Park in Agoura Hills served as the filming location (in place of Korea) for M*A*S*H TV series.
• LAC+USC Medical Center
• Griffith Park
• Los Angeles Arboretum

• Despite the name, the annual San Diego Comic-Con has become a major event in the cinema world. Taking place in San Diego every July, this is one of the world's biggest fan conventions and tickets are expensive and hard to get, but if you're lucky enough to get inside you can expect plenty of big-name film and television stars and producers, in addition to representatives of major toy manufacturers and the video game and comic industries, showing up to offer sneak peeks at major upcoming releases.
• San Francisco has been the backdrop for numerous famous films, including Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, the Dirty Harry series, and the action movie The Rock.
• 34.0403-118.269616 Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angeles, ☏ +1 213 741-1151. The location of the yearly E3 (The Electronic Entertainment Expo) convention for new video games and consoles. Held in June. (updated Oct 2015)

• 43.7-79.416717 Toronto. A place where a surprising number of movies (and series) were shot that are set elsewhere. If you come to the city you might notice that some houses that are in New York or San Francisco according to your favorite sitcom are actually here. The University of Toronto site has a map of film and TV locations in the city. 
• 49.2-12318 Vancouver. Another place where a number of television series and movies have been filmed at such as Crush (1993); Smallville, Stargate, X-Files , Battlestar Galactica among others have been filmed in Vancouver. Some of the backdrops for some of the televisions shows are out of this world. Vancouver has had to stand in for numerous other places and few shows shot in Vancouver are actually set there, leading to the quip that "Vancouver doesn't even look like Vancouver" 

• 46.488423-63.3823417 Green Gables Heritage Place (Cavendish, Prince Edward Island). Author Lucy Maud Montgomery visited the farm as a young girl and based the location of her best-selling "Anne" series of books on the Green Gables farm. The farmhouse exterior has not changed significantly over time, and its interior decor and artifacts depict the late Victorian Period in rural Prince Edward Island. (updated May 2017)

Many Brazilian action films have taken place in favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro, such as City of God, the two Elite Squad movies and Last Stop 174. One of those favelas where some of this films were shot is Tavares Bastos, in the Catete neighborhood, in South Zone of Rio de Janeiro. In addition to these films, in this favela was recorded the music video Beautiful by Snoop Dog and Pharrell.