Since the onset of the COVID worldwide crisis, more film productions are relocating from Hollywood to the Gold Coast, with A-listers flocking to our city. This has resulted in our city now having one of the world's most booming film industries.
The Gold Coast has a long and proud tradition of film and television production. The city is an enviable filming location for any production company, with a diverse range of easily accessible locations, world-class studios, and highly-skilled production crews experienced in both film and television. We are also the only local government in Australia to provide incentives to attract these productions to our city.
“We have a huge base of crew out of the Gold Coast that have been working with us, really professional and have really pulled off a lot of miracles for us." – Rob Cowan, Executive Producer for San Andreas.
Why film here?
- Home of internationally-renowned Village Roadshow Studios
- A diverse range of unique filming locations all located in close proximity
- Australia's only local city offering financial incentives in addition to state and federal incentives
- World-class film and television production crews and equipment
- A sub-tropical environment with warm weather and sunshine all year round
- Screen-friendly local government with fast-track permit applications and dedicated city support
- A fibre optic cable network that provides some of Australia's fastest internet services
- The largest Wi-Fi network in Australia
- A strong local industry and education providers specialising in film and television
- Access to two international airports; a 13-hour direct flight to Los Angeles, an 11-hour flight to Shanghai and a one-hour flight to Sydney.
Diverse & accessible locations
The Gold Coast is famous for its beautiful sub-tropical climate, 57 kilometres (35 miles) of coastline, 260 kilometres (161 miles) of waterways and world heritage-listed rainforests. The diverse range of accessible locations allows for any landscape to be replicated within the region.
From emotive city or country scenes, beautiful beaches and sub-tropical rainforests, to a unique blend of architecture, scenic roads and city locations, the Gold Coast offers production companies easily accessible locations all within a 30-minute radius of the Village Roadshow Studios.
Filming locations and fact sheets
Visit the Gold Coast Reel Scout Locations Directory to view detailed images of over 150 filming locations in the region.
Download Film Gold Coast Location and Studio Guide(PDF, 17MB)
Film fact sheet – Chinese simplified - 澳大利亚黄金海岸 电影概况(PDF, 516KB)
World-class studios
The Village Roadshow Studios offers world-class film production facilities comprising 9 sound stages, 3 water tanks, 10 production offices, editing suites, wardrobe, makeup, construction, paint and carpentry workshops.
As one of the largest studio lots in the Southern Hemisphere, stages vary in size with an overall floor area of 14,564m2 (156,731 square feet). All sound stages are equipped with current industry-standard facilities including air conditioning, extraction fans, steel grids and catwalks.
The water tank has a surface area of 1200m2 (12,915 square feet), holds 6 million litres of water and has state-of-the-art filtration and heating systems that allows the tank water to be heated to 32°C (89.6°F).
World-class crews
The Gold Coast's film industry is powered by some of the world's top filmmaking talent, boasting a range of experience in Australian and international production. Experienced Heads of Department and world-leading technicians at the peak of their craft have worked on some of the world's most complex physical productions.
Recent productions powered by locals include:
- New Line's San Andreas
- Marvel's Thor: Ragnarok
- Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
- Warner Bros' Aquaman
Catering for a diverse range of budgets, our crews are multi-skilled, versatile and cover a wide variety of formats ranging from television series to feature films, movies of the week and pilots.
Major productions filmed on the Gold Coast
The Gold Coast has attracted international and national production companies to the region to film over $1.9 billion of productions.
Feature productions
- Aquaman
- Thor: Ragnarok
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
- San Andreas
- Unbroken
- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
- Fool's Gold
- Nim's Island
- The House of Wax
- Peter Pan
- Ghost Ship
- Scooby Doo
Television series
- Terra Nova
- H20: Just Add Water – seasons 1, 2 and 3
- Mako: Island of Secrets – seasons 1 and 2
- Reef Break
- Bureau of Magical Things 2
- The End
- Big Brother – 12 seasons of the original reality TV hit
Australian productions filmed on the Gold Coast
- The Railway Man
- Bait 3D
- Sanctum 3D.
Fibre optic network on the Gold Coast
We are the first Council in Australia to invest in 864-core carrier grade fibre optic network with capacity to deliver 1Gbps internet service. This is 60 times faster than the average internet service. Our aim is to provide a digital infrastructure network that has greater capacity and an efficient, cost-effective way to move large footage files overseas during production.
The network was utilised during the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games™ and roll-out will continue over the next 2 years.
Find out more about our digital connectivity, as well as our investment in the Gold Coast fibre optic network.
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