How Hungary became a filmmaking destination

Think of Academy Award-winning movies such as “Poor Things,” “Blade Runner 2049” and “The Brutalist” and you might assume they were made in Los Angeles.

But instead of being produced in California’s famous studios, they were all shot largely in one central European country: Hungary. Huge production complexes, a variety of land and cityscapes and generous incentives have made Hungary a hub for Hollywood.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Cruise, Eddie Redmayne, Liam Hemsworth, Anne Hathaway and Dakota Fanning were all reportedly seen in Hungary’s capital Budapest and its surrounding areas this year.

Hungary has been involved with cinema since its earliest days. The Lumière brothers, makers of the cinematograph device, brought their invention to Budapest’s Grand Hotel Royal in 1896 — just months after its Paris debut — and had camera operators film landmarks in the city the same year.

When Budapest’s artists and writers saw the early movies they “lost their minds in a good way, and almost immediately started creating their own films,” according to movie director Justin Reardon, who runs production firm The Royal Budapest Film Company with his wife Barbara. The first Hungarian film staged for the screen was shot in 1901 on the rooftop of the Uránia, a Budapest palace that hosted science presentations, which is now a “cathedral”-like movie theater, he said.

Hungarians have also had an outsized influence on the American movie industry. Adolph Zukor, born in the then Austro-Hungarian empire, emigrated at 16 to the U.S., and in 1912 co-founded Paramount Pictures, while William Fox — born Vilmos Fried — was the Hungarian-American founder of the Fox Film Corporation that became Twentieth Century-Fox in 1935.

Actors Zsa Zsa Gabor, Tony Curtis, Rachel Weisz and Adrien Brody have Hungarian roots, while Budapest-born Gábor Csupó founded a Hollywood studio that produced early seasons of “The Simpsons.”

With its grand architecture as well as areas that appear a little more gritty, Budapest has doubled for European cities such as Paris, Berlin and Rome in movies including “Evita,” “Max,” and “Inferno.”

“It’s got many different looks,” said producer Barbara Reardon. It’s also easy to get around, and international movie executives feel at home, she said. “Budapest is equipped with a little bit of everything. You can find your green juices and healthy salads … and a lot of studio heads and and actors, they like that,” she told CNBC by video call.

For author Judy Laufer, Budapest as a movie location has a personal connection: her family escaped from the city during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, fleeing across the border to Austria before emigrating to Canada. Laufer is the producer of an independent movie, “Ashes to Iron,” which tells her family’s story and was shot in Hungary.

“Unless there’s a specific thing that tells you you’re in Budapest, like the big synagogue, for instance … you really could be anywhere,” Laufer said, referring to a large synagogue on Dohány Street, the thoroughfare where she lived for the first year-and-a-half of her life. Laufer is submitting the movie to film festivals including Sundance and Berlin and will hold a private screening in Budapest to mark the 70-year anniversary of the revolution later this month.

Other locations for “Ashes to Iron” include a small airport and a nature trail outside Budapest. Barbara Reardon said the country is also attractive for filming because of the proximity to multiple different types of landscapes. “Outside of the city, you have the lake that you can double for a sea,” she said, referring to Lake Balaton, central Europe’s largest freshwater lake. “Maybe we don’t have mountains, but nowadays that’s an easy fix, [as] the surrounding countries do.”

While the Hungarian studios can’t compete in size with California’s Warner Bros. Studios Burbank or Universal Studios, they can compete on price. Production costs are around 30% to 50% cheaper than in the U.S., according to Barbara Reardon.

About a 20-minute drive north of Budapest is Origo Studios, a complex where large chunks of U.S. movies including “Dune,” “Dune: Part Two” and “Inferno” were shot. The studio has 11 stages plus 4 acres of backlot (where movie sets for outdoor scenes are built) and was founded in 2010 in a partnership with U.S. production company Raleigh Studios, run by American studio executive Michael Moore at the time.

When CNBC visited Origo Studios in August, it was quiet. CEO Márta Fekszi Horváth described it as a “transition period,” but added that she was “very optimistic” about forthcoming productions.

Hungary’s movie industry was thrown into disarray after former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán paused an incentive scheme that provided a 30% rebate on all production spend in the country. While the scheme was restarted in December, the former government also put a cap on the value of productions for the first half of 2026, adding to the uncertainty as producers tend to plan budgets a year ahead or more.

The new government has submitted proposals to supplement the rebate by 63 billion Hungarian forints ($193 million), Horváth said, and last month, Hungary’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Anita Orbán sought to reassure the movie industry further, saying that the new administration aimed to provide a “stable and predictable framework” for the incentive system. The government wanted to bring “even more” international productions to the country, she added.

One large-scale production that was shot in Hungary and is set for release in the U.S. and U.K. this month is “Wicker,” starring Olivia Colman as an ostracized, single fisherwoman and Alexander Skarsgård as her custom-ordered husband crafted out of willow. It was filmed on two medieval backlots at Korda Studios and the National Film Institute, to the west and north of the city respectively, according to Barbara Reardon, a local co-producer.

Hollywood studios often want to bring in their own teams to oversee certain functions, or may take post-production back home, according to the Reardons. But Barbara said she’s seen a shift. “‘Wicker’ … was one of the first big international films with big international stars that hired [a] local production designer, local costume designer, local hair and makeup designer,” she said.

The movie’s writer-directors, Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer, set the film “outside of a specific time and place, which meant we got to invent our own culture,” Fischer said in production notes seen by CNBC. The movie’s costume designers, András Dániel Tóth and Attila Godena-Juhász, who are Hungarian, were inspired by Hungary’s traditional clothing, such as bridal headpieces with layered veils, and Wilson said the country’s folk art and traditions shaped how “Wicker” looks.

For a “tiny little” country, Hungary punches above its weight, Justin Reardon said. “You don’t expect in a very small market to have such a robust group of people that are able to to accomplish so much.”