G20, the new Viola Davis movie on Amazon, began streaming yesterday and is the latest political action movie where the President of the United States saves the world. Only this time, Viola Davis is Madame President.
Directed by Mexican filmmaker Patricia Riggen, with a screenplay written by Caitlin Parrish, Erica Weiss, and Logan & Noah Miller, G20 stars Davis (also an executive producer on the film) as the fictional President of the United States, Danielle Sutton. President Sutton travels with her husband (Anthony Anderson) and two children to South Africa for the annual G20 summit, a conference where leaders from the world’s wealthiest countries gather in a show of global economic cooperation. But when the summit is attacked by a terrorist group who holds the world leaders hostage, it’s up to President Sutton to defend her family, her country, and the world.
The G20 movie takes places in South Africa, but just because a film takes place in a certain location, that doesn’t mean that is where the movie was filmed. Read on to learn about the G20 movie filming locations.
The G20 movie was filmed on location in Cape Town, South Africa. But if you go to Cape Town’s Signal Hill—where you’ll get a fantastic view of the ocean, the city, and the mountains—you won’t see the hotel from the G20 movie. That’s because, though it’s shown in the movie, in real life there is no hotel on Signal Hill in Cape Town. The exterior shots of the hotel in G20 were digitally created in post-production, through a blend of constructed sets, other locations, and VFX all stitched together.
In an interview for the G20 press notes, visual effects supervisor Sean Farrow described creating the fictional hotel, saying, “We explored how far we could push the boundaries to make it cinematically grand. It was a matter of balancing our narrative requirements, our spectacle and the amount of realism we needed to achieve. We did many surveys of the hill and stitched together various locations into one iconic international hotel we call the Grand Diamont.”
The interior shots of the hotel were filmed on a set, included several scenes in the hotel’s main ballroom. VFX was used on the massive windows in the room to adjust for day or night. Director of photography Checco Varese explained, “Outside the windows, we used a combination of VFX plates, for day or night, adjusting the interior lighting accordingly and traditional backdrops adding LED Panels in order to add realism and movement to the city lights, making the sky shimmer in the evening scenes. I think we found a perfect balance — the hotel appears close enough to be an integral part of the city and far enough away to afford the most amazing views.”
In that same interview for the press notes, producer Andrew Lazar added, “I’m sure the tourism board is going to be inundated with calls about where the Grand Diamont is. But a magnificent hotel positioned on the top of Signal Hill doesn’t exist. It’s all done by the wonderful artistry of our production and visual effects teams.”
So there you have it. If you were hoping to visit the hotel from the G20 movie in Cape Town, you’re out of luck. It doesn’t exist!