If there’s one thing we can count on in this crazy, mixed-up world, it’s that Tyler Perry will never stop making Madea movies. Case in point: A new Madea movie, Madea’s Destination Wedding, began streaming on Netflix today.
Madea’s Destination Wedding is the twelfth official movie in the comedy franchise that first launched nearly two decades ago, with Diary of a Mad Black Woman in 2005. If you’re thinking that must mean that Perry’s signature character—the tough matriarch of the family known as Madea—must be getting up there in age, you’d be right. These days, Madea is a grandmother. Like many grandmothers, she doesn’t like to travel. So she’s not too happy to learn that her nephew Brian (also played by Perry) wants her to attend the surprise, destination wedding between his daughter Tiffany (Diamond White) and a rapper she just met in the Bahamas. But family always come first.
Madea’s Destination Wedding certainly sounds like a movie that would be filmed in an exotic location, right? But expensive, destination productions is not the way Perry rolls. Read on to learn more about where Madea’s Destination Wedding was actually filmed.
Despite the title of the film, Madea’s Destination Wedding was filmed, for the most part, on a set in Atlanta, Georgia at Tyler Perry Studios. Perry is known for his lightning-fast, breakneck productions with sometimes controversial labor practices, in order to shoot his movies in a matter of days. Madea’s Destination Wedding seems to be no exception. The entire Atlanta production took place from January 15 to 26, 2024, according to a report from The Atlanta Journal-Constution. If you’re wondering why so much of a movie that takes place in the Bahamas is set indoors—that’s why!
That said, there were a few additional shooting dates that took place in the Dominican Republic, which doubled as the Bahamas for several of the exterior scenes in the movie.
Some scenes were shot on location at the Atlantis Paradise Island resort in the Bahamas, for a few key beautiful shots in the film.
So there you have it! Madea might be in the Bahamas, but, for the most part, Netflix viewers of the film will be staying in Atlanta.