War horror movie Overlord filmed UK as France

Production was based at Warner Bros Studios Leavesden near London where French village interiors were built, along with a network of tunnels and laboratories where much of the movie unfolds.

Avery’s production team also filmed on location outside the studio, including at Hatfield House Estate north of London.

Other key locations included a tunnel entrance to the subterranean settings, which was shot in Sussex.

“We had a lot of prep as the whole film takes place over one night so there was a lot of night shooting and therefore considerable lighting requirements,” says Harriet Lawrence, the film’s location manager, in comments to KFTV. “The art department had about five or six weeks’ prep at the tunnel location.

“We were also filming scenes throughout the night that involved gunfire, shoot-outs and explosions so we made sure the local community were fully aware of what we were doing.

“The tunnel exterior needed to be made accessible, the track cleared of weeds and then some dead wood removed. The art department then had significant prep time to turn it from an overgrown, inaccessible, disused railway tunnel to a secret entrance to a mysterious underwork.”

Getting to the tunnel entrance location proved one of the bigger challenges as travelling by car was only possible via a very roundabout drive. A scaffold staircase the team initially built down a steep embankment had to be taken down when it became clear it would be in shot during filming.

In the end a more subtle staircase was cut into the embankment itself and joined with other specially-created pathways and a temporary bridge.

“It looks very impressive, and very different on-screen from when we first looked at it months before the shoot,” Lawrence tells KFTV.

“The access logistics were so complicated, I am fairly sure the UPM said confidently on the first recce, ‘We’ll never shoot here’. At which point, we, in locations, knew we would indeed film there – no matter what!”

See KFTV's production guide for more on filming in the UK.

Image: Peter Mountain/Paramount Pictures