“When the characters fight, they change size and scale,” Fleischer says. “I knew what an Ames room was, but I didn’t really know exactly how the action could work so we went there before we built it.”
One room in the manor spins, so the team built the set into a giant contraption that could mechanically rotate. In another, mirrors cover the walls at specific angles, allowing up to 78 reflections to occur in one frame. The filmmakers created scale models of each room ahead of building the sets, and did a lot of tests to ensure everything created the right illusion. “Everything was really trippy,” Fleischer says. “We had one really cool build that didn’t make the final cut that was basically an optical illusion using convex and concave walls to trick you into thinking it looks deeper than it is.”
French Police Station
When Lula May (Lizzy Caplan) breaks Merritt out of a jail in rural France, the scenes actually take place in Szentendre, Hungary. The town, located outside of Budapest on the Danube River, is a popular tourist attraction. It was used for the exterior of the police station. The interior were filmed in an closed-down local museum, although the jail cells were additions. “Szentendre is this really charming Medieval village that’s only about a half hour north of Budapest,” Fleischer says. “The museum had some rooms, but we built other rooms on it as well.”
Abi Dhabi
After wrapping in Europe, the production relocated to Abu Dhabi for three weeks of filming. They shot both in the city and in the nearby desert, where Dune: Part Two also happened to be working. “They did all their desert sand stuff there too,” Fleischer says. “I’d never experienced that degree of rolling sand.”
In the film, the Horsemen journey to Abu Dhabi during an F1 race, where Veronika is preparing to showcase her racing team. The track was a real one, located at the W Abu Dhabi Yas Island. The hotel is built over the track and the viewing bridge became Veronika’s suite, where she eventually captures the original Horsemen in a cage they have to escape. As they battle to free themselves (a scene that was done on a set), the younger magicians steal Veronika’s car.
