Filming Locations Used for Wildly Different Movies
Considering how many different places Hollywood makes movies about, they sure don’t like to leave home very often. Movie filming locations are, like, 80 percent L.A., 15 percent Toronto and a handful of European castles. That means it’s inevitable that locations will get reused, even in wildly different movies.
Harry Potter and Dumbledore Fought Cave Zombies Inside the Cliffs of Insanity
The Cliffs of Moher, on the west coast of Ireland, are the cliffs Cary Elwes failed to scale without help in The Princess Bride and also the ones Harry Potter and Dumbledore infiltrate to find Voldemort’s cursed locket in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. This implies the fictional country of Guilder not only exists in the Harry Potter universe but somehow is rowing distance from Scotland.
Billy Madison Lived in the X-Men House
Toronto’s Parkwood Estate, formerly the home of the founder of General Motors of Canada, has appeared in a number of movies and series, but usually in an academic context. Thanks to its boarding school vibes, it was the perfect place for the X-Men, The Umbrella Academy and Charlie Bartlett to study. It served the opposite function, however, as Billy Madison’s ancestral mansion, where he lounged poolside with Norm Macdonald and hallucinated horny penguins.
Dinosaurs Chased Sam Neill at the Same Ranch Where Drew Barrymore Beat Up Rob Schneider
Hollywood wouldn’t do for Isla Nubar, but Spielberg and co. weren’t prepared to take it to Costa Rica, either. Instead, the prehistoric theme park was built in Hawaii, including Kualoa Ranch, where a herd of gallimimus chased Dr. Grant and the kids. It’s the same ranch where Drew Barrymore beat the crap out of Rob Schneider with a baseball bat in 50 First Dates. It’s hard to say which was more thrilling.
Freddy Krueger Sliced and Diced Where Bo Burnham Sheltered in Place
In a 2022 real estate listing, it was revealed that the same house where the Thompson family lived in the Nightmare on Elm Street series served as the set for Bo Burnham’s pandemic opus Inside. It wasn’t a Hollywood lie, either — he actually lived there. No wonder he got a little loopy. Lockdown might have seemed bad for you, but at least you didn’t have to do it where people died for sleeping.
‘Airheads’ Took Over Nakatomi Plaza
If you watched a lot of Comedy Central in the ‘90s and 2000s, you probably remember Airheads, one of 1994’s floppiest flops about a grunge band that holds a radio station hostage. What you probably don’t remember, however, is that the radio station was in Nakatomi Plaza, actually called Fox Plaza or 2121 Avenue of the Stars, the legendary office building where Die Hard took place. It seems that Adam Sandler has just as much trouble finding original filming locations as original script ideas.
