The Moscow car chase you remember from a “Die Hard” sequel never went near Russia, the dust-choked Las Vegas casino in “Blade Runner 2049” was a derelict palace half a world away and the grand opera house where Jennifer Lawrence makes her entrance in “Red Sparrow” has never hosted a single Russian ballet. All three scenes were filmed in the same place, a city that has spent years quietly playing everywhere but itself. That city is Budapest.
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The Hungarian capital does not just appear on screen as Budapest. It disappears into other cities, standing in for Paris boulevards, Moscow squares and imagined planets, and that talent for disguise has turned it into one of the busiest production centers in Europe. The country’s film business has grown roughly fivefold in recent years, now worth nearly $1 billion a year and employing around 20,000 people. Directors come for the studios, the crews and the savings, then borrow the city’s architecture to build somewhere else entirely.
The soundstages behind the spectacle
Two studios anchor the boom. ORIGO Studios, in Budapest, built the desert planet of Arrakis for both “Dune” films and the warped world of the Oscar-winning “Poor Things” on its soundstages. West of the city, in the wine village of Etyek, Korda Studios turned its stages into the red sands of Mars for “The Martian” and helped construct the neo-noir future of “Blade Runner 2049.” Neither set survives once a shoot wraps, but the stages stay busy, cycling one blockbuster world out and the next one in.
The opera house that plays Moscow
Budapest’s grandest interiors do the same work, with the Hungarian State Opera House, a neo-Renaissance showpiece on Andrássy Avenue, opening “Red Sparrow” as a Moscow stage, the place where Lawrence’s ballerina shatters her leg and her career in a single fall. The auditorium, the marble staircases and the chandelier all read as Russian on camera, though no scene in that sequence was shot anywhere near Moscow. It is one of the most requested filming venues in the city, and most visitors touring it never realize they have seen it before.
The palace that became a Las Vegas casino
A few minutes away, on Liberty Square, the Old Stock Exchange Palace sat empty for years before a film crew found it. Its vast, decaying halls became the irradiated Las Vegas casino where Ryan Gosling’s character tracks down Harrison Ford in “Blade Runner 2049.” The building’s faded grandeur needed almost no dressing to pass as a ruined monument to a dead city, which is exactly why the location worked.
1 avenue, 2 cities
Andrássy Avenue shows the trick most plainly in “A Good Day to Die Hard.” Its boulevards and the sweep of nearby Heroes’ Square stood in for central Moscow, complete with car chases meant to read as Russian streets. In Bel Ami, the same avenue became 19th-century Paris. Budapest has doubled for Paris in dozens of productions, helped by the shared look of grand avenues, cafes and stations. One street, two capitals, depending on which film you are watching.
The disguises keep coming
The trick keeps working because the economics do. Hungary has become a key production hub in Europe, with its film-support scheme locked in through the end of the decade and its studios fully booked as crews and stage space scale up to meet demand. For travelers, the payoff is on the ground. Film-location tours now thread together the studios, palaces and avenues, letting visitors stand inside the Vegas casino or on the Moscow staircase and see the seams the camera hid.
Budapest’s next roles are already being shot, and as long as the stages stay full and the incentives hold, the city will keep slipping into other skylines, its best performances the ones audiences never catch. The places on screen will go on belonging to somewhere else. The address, more and more often, will be Hungary.
Jennifer Allen is a retired chef turned traveler, cookbook author and nationally syndicated journalist; she’s also a co-founder of Food Drink Life, where she shares expert travel tips, cruise insights and luxury destination guides. A recognized cruise expert with a deep passion for high-end experiences and off-the-beaten-path destinations, Jennifer explores the world with curiosity, depth and a storyteller’s perspective. Her articles are regularly featured on the Associated Press Wire, The Washington Post, Seattle Times, MSN and more.