Even if you don’t live in London, it’s easy enough to be transported here through the medium of cinema, with the capital seemingly popping up on screen more times than we could count from the martini-sipping Mr Bond to the city where the muggles tread in Harry Potter to the beasts in An American Werewolf in London.
Now, filming location experts Giggster actually have gone and counted to crunch the numbers to find that, yes: London is indeed one of the most filmed cities in the entire world. The Big Smoke came in at fourth place on their list of the most popular filming locations around the globe, with three US cities pipping us to the post.
London has been calculated to appear in nearly 80,000 movies, but it was New York City and Los Angeles that trumped everyone else and then some, with the Big Apple appearing in 273,569 and the City Of Angels in 231,337. In third place was Memphis, just beating London with a tally of 107,347. I suppose we never stood a chance against Home Alone 2: Lost In New York and the like, so we’ll happily take our fourth place; comfortable in the Champions League spots of worldwide filming locations.
Giggster also found that Tower Bridge was the UK landmark spotted most in films, closely followed by King’s Cross station (how in the platform 9 and 3/4 did that get there?), the Tower of London, Buckingham Palaceand Dorset Bay. It’s safe to say these all look good on camera and are worthy of showing off the city in cinema.
You can read the full study by Giggster on the movie locations around the world by heading to their website.
The top 10 most filmed cities in the world
1. New York City, USA (273,569)
2. Los Angeles, USA (231,337)
3. Memphis, USA (107,347)
4. London, UK (77,498)
5. Madrid, Spain (54,950)
6. Tokyo, Japan (36,620)
7. Sydney, Australia (35,859)
8. Melbourne, Australia (35,144)
9. Chicago, USA (23,532)
10. Manchester, UK (22,710)
