Atlanta competes with Hollywood: Southern Georgia is a perfect destination for film tourists. Fiction and reality sometimes blur on a tour of famous locations. What fans can expect on this trip.
Chief Jim Hopper stood on these creaking steps. He turned exactly this worn door knob and then stepped through the weathered blue door.
Robyn Stankiewicz looks very moved. She’s never been her movie hero from the US Netflix series “Stranger Things“closer than here, on the musty veranda of the small wooden hut. Almost a rendezvous – if it weren’t for the other fans.
Set jetting as an international travel phenomenon
Surrounded by trees, “Hopper’s Cabin” stands on the grounds of Sleepy Hollow Farm in Powder Springs, half an hour’s drive from Georgia’s capital Atlanta. The simple wooden shack is not just an original location from the cult series, but a pilgrimage site for committed film tourists like Robyn Stankiewicz, who came from Texas. Minibuses from Atlanta Movie Tours unload groupie groups every day on a guided search for traces.
Hopper’s Cabin: The backdrop is known from the cult series “Stranger Things”. (Source: dpa / Heike Schmidt Windhoff)
Since New Zealand’s busy self-marketing as home to Middle-earth, set-jetting has been an international travel phenomenon. Thousands from all over the world follow in the footsteps of the hobbits from the monumental Tolkien film adaptation “Lord of the Rings”.
From “Walking Dead” to “Forrest Gump”
Against that is the US state Georgia almost an insider tip for film tourists. There are film locations here on every corner. 171 episodes of the teen horror soap “Vampire Diaries” were shot in Covington. Season 3 overrun “The Walking Dead“the town of Senoia as a backdrop for their Woodbury fortress.
Oscar winner Tom Hanks shared the adventures of “Forrest Gump” from a bank on Savannah’s Chippewa Square. Even if the hit film of the same name is almost 30 years old, “green tomatoes” are still fried in the Whistle Stop Café.
Whistle Stop Café: The house is from the film “Green Tomatoes”. (Source: dpa / Heike Schmidt Windhoff)
As a lifeguard, Dwayne Johnson recently patrolled the iconic new version of “Baywatch” along the white Atlantic beaches of Tybee Island. Reese Witherspoon’s “Sweet Home Alabama” actually played in northwest Georgia in 2002.
Atlanta remains at the heart of the film industry
Greater Atlanta remains the center of the local film and television industry. A good dozen small and large studios are located here. You can visit the CNN headquarters with its world’s largest self-supporting escalator and the “Friends” couch in the atrium, but most other studios like EUE / Screen Gems are not, due to the fact that new projects are kept secret. Parts of the “Hunger Games” and “Stranger Things” were recorded there. At Pinewood Atlanta Studios, Marvel’s other superheroes have regularly been saving fantastic cinema worlds since 2014.
How film tourism started in Georgia
Thanks to Jimmy Carter. Motivated by the random success of a domestic low-budget film, the then governor sensed big business as early as the 70s. His homeland, the later president raved about the Hollywood-Bosses, be a lot cheaper and a lot more authentic than artificial outdoor backdrops. Carter convinced the filmmakers.
Since 2002, substantial tax benefits have further boosted the local film business. That is why Underdog Georgia is making surprising competition for the Alphas today. 399 cinema and television films were produced here in 2019. California is still at the forefront as the center of the American cinema industry, closely followed by New York. But in the past fiscal year, the industry had already invested $ 3 billion in the southern state, according to the regional film office.
And where are the movie stars?
The tour buses start again. The “Stranger-Things” route continues through Atlanta’s periphery, showing excerpts on the on-board screen and making stops: at the “Hawkins Community Pool”, the police station and the empty “Arcade” games library. The checkered drapes from the set are still hanging in Tiffany’s Kitchen aka “Benny’s Burger”. Movie stars are nowhere to be found. Maybe the City Movie Tour is luckier?
“Look closely,” says Guide Sydney Madison and playfully raises his index finger. The cardboard sign looks inconspicuous on the roadside. Lashed to a traffic cone, it announces a special parking ban in red and white. If black camera cranes were still standing, filming would take place here. Unfortunately they don’t.
Pull for it Attractions over: the birthplace and tomb of Martin Luther King, the Olympic Park from 1996 with its water fountains, the Capitol and the Coca Cola Museum.
Birthplace of Martin Luther King Jr .: The building is part of a sightseeing tour of Atlanta. (Source: dpa / James Duckworth / Atlanta CVB)
Where the pastor still plays himself
By the way, confusing 71 variations of the word “peach tree” can be found in Atlanta. A few corners further, past a graffiti sprayed for the film “Jumanji”, the neo-Gothic Methodist church with the red doors also has such a peachtree address. On one condition, Guide Sydney reveals, even in the venerable church can be filmed – if the pastor can also play his part in the film.
The highlight of the tour is probably the view from the Jackson Street Bridge. From this perspective, the audience saw Rick Grimes riding in the pilot for “The Walking Dead” on the deserted highway towards Atlanta’s skyline. Such real scenes or Hopper’s wooden hut fuse fantasy and reality.
Overview of information
Holiday destination: Hollywood of the South is called the State of Georgia. With a population of six million, the greater Atlanta area is the center of the local film industry.
Arrival and formalities: There are usually various direct flight connections from Germany to Atlanta – because of Corona, check exactly which airline is definitely flying from when. German vacationers do not need a visa for the USA, but must obtain an electronic entry permit at https://esta.cbp.dhs.gov. It costs $ 14 and is valid for two years.
Climate and travel time: Summers are subtropical, long and hot, winters are short and mild. Travel is possible all year round.
Overnight stay: Chain hotels of different price ranges dominate downtown Atlanta. The “American Hotel”, modernized in retro chic, was one of the first to accommodate guests of all skin colors under one roof during the civil rights movement.
Information: Georgia Tourism c / o LMG Management GmbH, Bavariaring 38, 80336 Munich (Tel .: 089/45 21 86 – 26, www.georgia-usa.de).
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