Since Georgia passed super generous tax credits for TV and film production companies in 2008, films and TV shows shot here have pretended to be almost anywhere else.
Examples include New York City (”Anchorman 2,” “Coming 2 America,” “Ordinary Joe”), Miami (”Bad Boys 2″), metro Los Angeles (”Drop Dead Diva,” “Cobra Kai”), Detroit (”Respect”), Osage Beach, Missouri (”Ozark”) and Wakanda (”Black Panther”). CBS’s “MacGyver” was set in a different place almost every episode.
Nonetheless, there are a number of Georgia shows and films over the years both shot and set in the state like Fox’s “Star,” VH1′s “Single Ladies,” Bounce TV’s “Johnson,” AMC’s “The Walking Dead” (for the first few seasons), 2017 action film “Baby Driver” and the new Amazon rom-com film “I Want You Back.”
But there are a handful of projects fictionally set in Georgia that were actually shot in a different place. Before 2008, this happened simply because TV shows back in the day were typically shot in Los Angeles. That was the case for “Matlock” (1986-1995), starring Andy Griffith as a small-town Georgia attorney, and “Designing Women” (1986-1993), featuring women in an Atlanta interior design firm.
(If you want to watch “Matlock” streaming, it’s available via subscription on Philo and FETV via Sling, to name a couple of options. “Designing Women” is available for free on Tubi and Pluto TV.)
More recently, it appears that Georgia’s popularity as a place to film has often meant a lack of available crew and soundstages. This has led films and TV shows set in Georgia ending up shooting somewhere else.
The most notable recent example? Amazon Prime’s hit TV action series “Reacher,” which came out a week ago and quickly landed a second season. It’s set in Georgia but was shot in Ontario last year.
The series has received mostly favorable reviews and has become one of Amazon’s five most watched original series of all time in a matter of days. (Amazon did not release specific numbers.)
Here are a handful of others:
“Faith Under Fire”
Fictional setting: Decatur
Actual shooting location: Pittsburgh
What it’s about: This 2018 Lifetime movie starring Toni Braxton is based on Decatur school heroine Antoinette Tuff, who in 2013 convinced a potential school shooter to put down his weapon and place his faith in God.
“It was a deliciously chewy role,” Braxton told me back in 2018. “I came in prepared. I had all my lines ready. Then I arrived and they had 50 pages of rewrites!”
For Tuff, being on set “gave me chills. You see your life unfold and it takes you back to the moment.”
AVAILABLE: VOD on Amazon Prime
“Manhunt: Deadly Games”
Fictional setting: Atlanta, for much of the first half
Actual shooting location: Pittsburgh and surrounding woods
What it’s about: This is a 2019 Spectrum limited 10-episode series based on the hunt for the Centennial Olympic Park bomber.
They had to use CGI to place the Coke headquarters and CNN Center in the backdrop at the fake Centennial Olympic Park set. (The Clint Eastwood movie “Richard Jewell” actually used the park to re-enact the bombing.)
The series focuses on the falsely accused security guard Jewell, then the actual bomber Eric Rudolph. But the series shifts the timeline so both hunts happened in overlapping time, which wasn’t the case in reality.
“We wanted to capture the true feelings by fictionalizing our timeline,” executive producer Andrew Sodroski told the AJC in 2019. “Also to make it more exciting. A lot of the manhunt involved sitting and waiting in the woods looking for Eric for years.”
AVAILABLE: Spectrum subscribers (It was on Netflix for a period of time in late 2020 and 2021 but is not available anymore.)
“Troop Zero”
Fictional setting: Rural Georgia in 1977
Actual shooting location: Louisiana
What it’s about: This is a 2019 Amazon Prime movie about a misfit girl who dreams of visiting outer space and enters a national competition with a troupe of Birdie Scouts to achieve her goal. Viola Davis and Jim Gaffigan are two big names in the film.
The film received mixed reviews. On Metacritic, critics gave it a 58 out of 100. Viewers gave it an average of 6.9/10 on IMDb.com.
On the positive side, Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote that the film “is so sugary you’d get a cavity if you bit into it — but it’s also a cozy, satisfying and inspirational underdog tale, featuring a wonderful performance by Mckenna Grace.”
David Fear of Rolling Stone said “it is an innocuous, pleasant enough way to kill a few hours. That’s the worst thing you can say about it. It’s also, alas, the best thing you can say about it as well.”
AVAILABLE: Amazon Prime subscribers
“Out of Death”
Fictional setting: Blue Ridge Mountains of north Georgia
Actual shooting location: Puerto Rico
What it’s about: This low-budget 2021 thriller starring Bruce Willis was one of eight Willis vehicles released that year. They were all considered so bad, the Razzies gave the “Die Hard” star his own category.
This tropical Puerto Rican milieu hardly matched the north Georgia mountains in any realistic sense.
For what it’s worth, this is the plot summary:
When Shannon (Jaime King) sets out on a hike to spread her deceased father’s ashes, she witnesses a corrupt sheriff’s deputy, Billie (Lala Kent) brutally murder a drug dealer. Having seen Shannon witness the murder, Billie and her cohorts set off to permanently silence Shannon. On the run from the dirty cops, Shannon stumbles into and recruits the help of a retired cop, Jack Harris (Willis).
AVAILABLE: Hulu subscribers or video on demand in places like Amazon Prime, Vudu and YouTube TV.
“The Sweetest Christmas”
Fictional setting: Helen
Actual shooting location: Heritage Village in Burnaby, British Columbia
What it’s about: This Hallmark movie from 2017 starring Lacey Chabert is supposedly set in the faux Bavarian Alpine town of Helen but used a comparable-looking town in Canada instead.
Chabert, known for “Party of Five” and “Mean Girls,” has paid the bills in recent years starring in multiple Christmas films.
In this case, she plays a struggling pastry chef who makes the finals of the American Gingerbread Competition, and hopes the publicity will help her jumpstart her new café. But her oven breaks down so she gets help from an old boyfriend, who has an industrial pizza oven she could use. Their romance is rekindled! But wait: an ex-boyfriend tries to foil her plans!
AVAILABLE: VOD on several platforms including Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play and Redbox
“Love, Victor”
Fictional setting: Atlanta
Actual shooting location: Los Angeles
What it’s about: Set in the world of the the movie “Love, Simon,” which was actually shot in Atlanta, this Hulu series focuses on Victor (Michael Cimino), a gay teen who moves to Atlanta from Texas and reaches out to Simon when things become too difficult. The show debuted in 2020, and it was just announced that the third and final season will premiere June 15.
The series received solid reviews from both critics and viewers.
AVAILABLE: Hulu
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