If you watched The Gorge on Apple TV+ this weekend—the new sci-fi romance starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller—then you know that the two protagonists in this movie have no idea where they are for most of the film.
Written by Zach Dean and directed by Scott Derrickson (The Black Phone, Doctor Strange), The Gorge follows two elite sharpshooters (Taylor-Joy and Teller) who are hired to guard the east and west side of a deep, mysterious trench. Not only do they not know what dangers lurk in the gorge, they don’t even know where the gorge is. After they agree to take the job, they are both drugged and flown to a remote location. That said, Teller’s character, Levi, is able to deduce that they are in the Northern Hemisphere, based on the seasons.
Our lead characters do eventually find out what lives at the bottom of the gorge (it’s not good!), but they never do figure out where, exactly, they are. Luckily, we the audience do not have to remain blind. Read on to find out more about The Gorge filming locations.
The Gorge was filmed, for the most part, on soundstages in the U.K., at the Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, which is just outside of London, England.
That said, when it comes to those exterior shots of the titular gorge, that is footage of a real canyon in Norway. Even though Miles Teller and Anya Taylor didn’t film any scenes in Norway, director Scott Derrickson shot background “plates” of the exterior in Norway, and then created composite shots in post-production.
“We shot plates in Norway for the canyon, for the rock walls, for the forests, for the sky, and then sort of stitched together the virtual space itself of the gorge,” Derrickson explained in an interview with Bloody Disgusting. “The top of the pillars of the watchtowers were real, giant, to-scale sets, and then the virtual space around them was built from the real photography.”
Derrickson said in a different interview with io9 that he insisted on doing composite, instead of just CGI, “because if it was a CGI background, you could tell.” The director explained, “When you’re looking at the gorge, most of what you’re seeing is real photography. And that is what makes it look good. It makes it look real. It looks real because, for the most part, it is real. It’s just been manipulated into the shape that I needed it to be, but the elements themselves are actually photographed real material.”
According to the film’s credit sequence, these plates were filmed specifically in Åndalsnes, Norway, a town in the Rauma Municipality that is a popular stop on many cruise ships, thanks to the stunning mountains, cliffs, and valleys that make up the scenery. The production also filmed in Leon, Norway, a village in Stryn Municipality in the Vestland county, known for its deep fjords.
Additional filming locations for The Gorge include Surrey, Bedfordshire and County Durham in England; Conwy, Wales; and The Cullen Estate and Highlands in Scotland.
So there you have it! If you want to see a real-life gorge, book a sightseeing trip to Norway. Hopefully, it’s not full of mutated monsters.