While the bulk of Wonder Woman 1984‘s action takes place in Washington, D.C., production for the Wonder Woman sequel was actually based in London at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden. What does that mean? Well, pretty much all of the interior scenes you see play out in the film—from the scenes in the White House to the scenes in Diana’s apartment—were filmed on a soundstage with some good old movie magic.
Leavesden—which features roughly 538,196 square footage of flexible space, including stage space, one of the largest filtered and heated stage-based water tanks in Europe, production office space, workshops and support buildings—is one of the few places in the UK where large-scale film productions can be made. It is where the Harry Potter movies were filmed, as well as recent big-budget fare such as Spider-Man: Far From Home, Hobbs & Shaw, Ready Player One, the Kingsman films, and, most importantly, Paddington and Paddington 2.
Wonder Woman 1984 also did some location shooting around the U.K., including at St. Andrew’s Place, Regent’s Park, the Royal College of Physicians, the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, Hyde Park, the Savoy Hotel, and Torrington Square. But, as with any big-budget Hollywood movie, the film also headed to some beautiful locations to stage some of its most epic scenes.
“We wanted to make the movie that was very different than the first one, but a logical progression from the first one,” producer Charles Roven told Den of Geek and other outlets during a recent press conference. “We expanded the global footprint of the places where we shot. And in the first one we shot in the UK and we also shot in Italy. But in the second one, we shot in Washington, DC. We shot in Virginia. Then we went to the UK and we also, after that, we went to Spain and then we went to the Canary Islands. So our global footprint really expanded significantly. And of course that makes it very, very complicated.”
Let’s break down the global footprint of Wonder Woman 1984…
Where Did Wonder Woman 1984 Film Its Themyscira Scenes?
The Wonder Woman sequel returned to the Canary Islands to film much of the movie’s opening Themyscira sequence featuring Young Diana. Anything involving the Amazonian trials contraptions was on the Leavesden backlot (Leavesden has a 79-acre backlot with a 180-degree uninterrupted horizon), but many of the shots featuring the sweeping Mediterranean landscape were captured on Fuerteventura and Tenerife, two of the eight Canary Islands. The Canary Islands are a Spanish archipelago located off the coast of northwestern Africa.
Wonder Woman 1984 Washington, D.C. Filming Locations
It’s hard to recreate the regal majesty of Washington D.C., and Wonder Woman 1984 (mostly) didn’t try to. The film did spend time shooting in Washington, D.C. and northern Virginia. Locations included: the Landmark Mall in Alexandria, Virginia; Georgetown; filming around the U.S. Capitol; the Penn Quarter neighborhood, McPherson Square, the DAR Constitution Hall near the White House, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden at the Smithsonian, and the Lincoln Memorial.
“We had a blast shooting in Washington,” Gal Gadot told Den of Geek and other outlets during a set visit in 2018. “It was my first time being there, and I was shocked by how emotional I got as an Israeli by all the monuments and Lincoln. I think that we also — you know, there’s so many beautiful scenes that we shot there by the reflecting pool or by George Washington Monument or by the Capitol. It’s beautiful and it’s definitely going to have a lot of presence in our movie. The movie is not a political movie, but … it taps into issues that are very current.”
Did Wonder Woman Actually Film in Egypt?
No, Wonder Woman 1984 did not film any of its scenes in Egypt. The scenes set in the north African country were actually filmed in Almería, in Andalusia, aka southern Spain. The DC film shot at both the Alcazaba of Almería fortified complex and the Wall of Jayran in Almería.