Chris Evans and Ana de Armas may appear to travel the world in Ghosted, the new action romantic comedy now streaming on Apple TV+, but that’s all movie magic, baby. In fact, the Ghosted production never left the continental U.S. That’s Hollywood for ya!
Directed by Dexter Fletcher (Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman), Ghosted starts off as a sweet romantic comedy about a down-to-earth dude named Cole (Evans) who meets a cute girl named Sadie (de Armas) at the farmer’s market. The two hit it off, and have one of those incredible, life-changing dates. Cole is sure he’s met the one. Then Sadie ghosts him.
As it turns out, the reason Sadie ghosts Cole is that she’s secretly a CIA agent. Cole gets stuck in the middle of a dangerous mission in the Middle East. Captain America might be able to take the heat, but Cole is just a regular dude with bulging muscles and an unnaturally pretty face.
But although much of the film takes place across the ocean, Ghosted was filmed, for the most part, in Atlanta. Read on to learn more about the Ghosted filming location.
Though much of the film takes place overseas, Ghosted was filmed in the U.S., primarily in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as on location in Washington D.C. Most of the international locations were sets built in Atlanta.
Ghosted production designer Claude Paré said, in an interview for the Ghosted production notes, that one of the most difficult sets to build was the Mingora bizarre, for the Marvel cameo sequence that takes place in a Pakistani marketplace. The set took a total of six months to design and build. “We built this wonderful market square in Atlanta, believe it or not,” Paré said. “The facades are crooked and shabby and almost falling apart, as if they were built in medieval times. One of the background players was from that part of the world and she said it made her feel right at home.”
The same was true for the other scenes set in the Middle East. “We shot it in Atlanta but it looks like the Middle East, with goats and camels and every kind of unique visual we could find,” Paré explained. That said, some of the exterior shots of the Middle Eastern desert were filmed in New Mexico—including the movie’s stand-out set piece, in which Ana de Armas drives a bus, backward, in a high-speed car chase.
“The beginning and end of the 180 [chase scene] were done in New Mexico, where the stunt driver was actually able to crank it around,” explained visual effects coordinator J.D. Schwalm in an interview for the production notes. “The middle of that turn, where they’re going out over the cliff edge, was done in Atlanta on a big six-axis motion platform. We put the bus on top of a rig and then rotated it around in front of a blue screen.”
Some select scenes that take place in D.C. were filmed on location, including those early date scenes at The Wharf, Georgetown, and the Lincoln book tower inside Ford’s Theatre.
But the film’s big climax, in which a restaurant in Washington D.C. spins around like a Graviton ride at an amusement park, was also filmed on a set in Atlanta. The filmmakers actually visited in an amusement park to research the ride. “We wanted to see what it would feel like, how it would be if they tipped upside down, how you would aim a gun or throw the Aztec device across the room,” producer Jules Daly said in the production notes interview. “It sounds like a fun day at an amusement park, but that research informed what we could and couldn’t do in that sequence.”
So there you have it! With the power of set-building and movie magic, Hollywood can take viewers anywhere in the world.