Mark Wahlberg is back at again with a new action comedy movie, Play Dirty, which began streaming on Amazon Prime Video today.
Based on the Parker book series by Donald E. Westlake, Play Dirty is a new film from writer/director Shane Black, known for his irreverent action comedies like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and The Nice Guys. In Play Dirty, Wahlberg stars as Parker a professional thief who is out for money and revenge after a member of his team, Zen (played by Rosa Salazar) double-crosses him. He enlists the help of his buddy Grofield (played by LaKeith Stanfield), and winds up tangled up in all sorts of shenanigans including a treasure hunt, a South American dictator, and the New York City mob. That’s a lot of different things! But if anyone can handle the chaos, it’s Parker.
Also starring Keegan-Michael Key, Chukwudi Iwuji, Nat Wolff, and Thomas Jane, and Tony Shalhoub, Play Dirty takes viewers all over the world—in theory. But in practice, Play Dirty was filmed in just one country. And it might not be the country you’re expecting. Read on to learn more about the Play Dirty filming locations.
Play Dirty was filmed in Australia, both in a film studio on sets, and on location, in and around the Sydney area.
That means the scenes that take place in New York City and New Jersey were actually sets in Australia, built to recreate the U.S. east coast. In an interview for the Play Dirty press notes, producer Jules Daly explained the process.
“Everybody had to do their homework to build New York in Sydney,” Daly said. “Producer James Skotchdopole, line producer Jennifer Cornwell and their team prepped the movie meticulously. When you get people like Jen and Jim on your film, you get the A-team all the way. They knew where we could shoot to pull anything off, what needed to be enhanced with visual effects-wise, what we should build and what we should shoot on location.”
In that same interview, Producer James Skotchdopole explained how Australian roads and seasons—it was summer in Sydney while filming winter NYC scenes—complicated the shoot. “Of course the cars drive on the opposite sides of the street in Australia,” Skotchdopole said. “We had to completely shut down the streets and change out all the picture vehicles to ones with left-hand drives. We had to adjust signage, add our winter elements of snow and slush. It was a challenge at times, but it was all worth it.”
That said, while much of the movie was filmed on sets, there were some scenes shot on location—like the opening chase sequence that finds Wahlberg crashing through a horse race track. That sequence was filmed at the real-life Bankstown Paceway racetrack in Sydney.
“We used the Bankstown Paceway, a harness racing track outside of Sydney,” explained production designer Owen Paterson in the production notes interview. “It took some up-to-the-minute techniques to make that scene happen. We used a tool called Unreal Engine to create various parts of it. The scene involved so many moving parts and it had to be perfect.”
But many other locations were built for the movie, including the New Jersey intersection for a big stunt, the log cabin where Rosa Salazar first betrays Wahlberg, and a frozen-over pumping station. For the snow-tinged scenes near the end of the film, VFX was use to add in the snow. And the “Candy Cane lane” was built for the big, climactic chase scene.
“We dressed it with Christmas lights and decorations,” Paterson said of the Candy Cane Lane. “There’s ‘snow’ on the ground. We have great crews in Australia and we pulled out all the stops.”
If you’re wondering why Play Dirty went through all the trouble of shooting a movie that takes place in winter in NYC in an Australian summer, the answer is simple: tax credits.
“We received generous tax incentives from the national and state governments,” Skotchdopole explained. “Create New South Wales, the film commission, has been very helpful in getting us through some sticky times. They helped close some deals on a number of locations. Ausfilm has also been a great help. The incentives are something that the producers can rely on. And if that can continue on, then we’ll just keep bringing projects here.”