Source link : https://las-vegas-news.com/9-famous-movies-that-never-show-the-city-theyre-supposedly-set-in/
There’s a strange kind of magic trick happening in a lot of Hollywood productions, one most viewers never notice. A film tells you, through dialogue, title cards, or a police badge, that you’re watching a story unfold in one specific city. Yet the streets, skylines, and buildings on screen belong to somewhere else entirely, sometimes thousands of miles away.
This isn’t laziness. It’s often a mix of budget constraints, tax incentives, and studio logistics that push productions toward cheaper or more accommodating locations. Below are nine well-documented cases where the gap between the setting and the shooting location is wide enough to notice, once you know where to look.
1. RoboCop (1987) – Set in Detroit, filmed in Dallas
Paul Verhoeven’s satirical action classic is unmistakably a Detroit story, following a slain police officer resurrected as a corporate cyborg to clean up a crime-ravaged Motor City. It’s set in a futuristic Detroit, but the sharp-eyed will soon spot the landmark buildings of Eighties downtown Dallas, Texas, standing in for the dystopian Motor City. The production actually considered other cities first before landing on Texas.
Chicago was dismissed for aesthetic reasons, New York City for high costs, and California because Orion wanted to distance itself from the project. The film’s iconic OCP headquarters exterior is actually Dallas City Hall, 1500…
—-
Author : Matthias Binder
Publish date : 2026-09-09 06:55:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
—-
1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8