Mamma Mia sequel filmed Croatian island as Greece
The long-gestating musical sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again filmed the Croatian island of Vis as Greek locales.
By Nick Goundry 25 Jun 2018
The long-gestating musical sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again filmed the Croatian island of Vis as Greek locales.
A sequel to 2008 hit Mamma Mia!, the new film follows Amanda Seyfried’s mother-to-be Sophie as she learns about her mother’s adventures as a young woman.
Whereas the first film shot location work on the Greek island of Skopelos, the sequel relocated proceedings to Vis, drawn in part by Croatia’s filming incentive support and the skilled local crew base.
“We started scouting in March and had Spanish and Croatian locations on the shortlist,” says Bill Darby, the movie’s supervising location manager, in comments to KFTV. “The tech scout ended up happening towards the end of July and then we filmed for about five weeks from 11 September.”
Production in fact began in the UK with selected interiors shot at Shepperton Studios near London, before up to 150 key crew were flown out to Vis. They complemented a large contingent of local hires.
"We looked everywhere,” says Darby of the scouting process all along the Croatian coastline and its islands. “We decided that Vis was the island that looked the most like Greece. It is beautifully unspoiled but Croatia has more than a thousand islands and about 18,000 kilometres of coastline, and we looked at almost every inch.”
The island’s two main towns – Vis and Komiza – became key filming locations for the Mamma Mia production team.
Local accommodation options were challenging but were eased by scheduling the shoot for the tail-end of the summer tourism season.
Greece launched its first formal filming incentive a few months after the Mamma Mia team wrapped on Vis and this support might have helped bring the shoot to one of the Greek islands if it had come a year or so earlier.
Croatia has become best known internationally for providing key story settings for HBO’s Game of Thrones. In addition, Dubrovnik hosted scenes for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, as well as an expansive set of medieval Nottingham for Otto Bathurst’s upcoming historical action movie Robin Hood.
The islands off Croatia’s mainland are less commonly used as filming locations by international producers, although recent AMC TV drama The Terror used wilderness visuals on the island of Pag as doubles for the plains of the North-West Passage in Canada’s Artic.
See KFTV's production guide for more on filming in Croatia.
Images: Jonathan Prime/Universal Pictures
Whereas the first film shot location work on the Greek island of Skopelos, the sequel relocated proceedings to Vis, drawn in part by Croatia’s filming incentive support and the skilled local crew base.
“We started scouting in March and had Spanish and Croatian locations on the shortlist,” says Bill Darby, the movie’s supervising location manager, in comments to KFTV. “The tech scout ended up happening towards the end of July and then we filmed for about five weeks from 11 September.”
Production in fact began in the UK with selected interiors shot at Shepperton Studios near London, before up to 150 key crew were flown out to Vis. They complemented a large contingent of local hires.
"We looked everywhere,” says Darby of the scouting process all along the Croatian coastline and its islands. “We decided that Vis was the island that looked the most like Greece. It is beautifully unspoiled but Croatia has more than a thousand islands and about 18,000 kilometres of coastline, and we looked at almost every inch.”
The island’s two main towns – Vis and Komiza – became key filming locations for the Mamma Mia production team.
Local accommodation options were challenging but were eased by scheduling the shoot for the tail-end of the summer tourism season.
Greece launched its first formal filming incentive a few months after the Mamma Mia team wrapped on Vis and this support might have helped bring the shoot to one of the Greek islands if it had come a year or so earlier.
Croatia has become best known internationally for providing key story settings for HBO’s Game of Thrones. In addition, Dubrovnik hosted scenes for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, as well as an expansive set of medieval Nottingham for Otto Bathurst’s upcoming historical action movie Robin Hood.
The islands off Croatia’s mainland are less commonly used as filming locations by international producers, although recent AMC TV drama The Terror used wilderness visuals on the island of Pag as doubles for the plains of the North-West Passage in Canada’s Artic.
See KFTV's production guide for more on filming in Croatia.
Images: Jonathan Prime/Universal Pictures
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