Tom Hanks and half of Hollywood loves Budapest

4,000 tons of soil was piled up in Budapest because of Matt Damon, but several other films were shot here; the film industry produces more money for Hungary than for any other European countries, reports Index. 

Many Hollywood blockbusters were shot in Budapest. Harrison Ford has lived here for months, taking selfies in Hungarian restaurants and bicycle stores, because of the shooting of Blade Runner 2049. GQ magazine published a photo series of Ryan Gosling posing in different locations in Budapest or reading Magyar Nemzet in bed – even Yahoo News has reported that TV2, the channel of Andy Vajna, covered the name of the newspaper while actually quoting it.

But Spy and The Martian were also shot here, just like Inferno and its leading actor, Tom Hanks said that he finds Budapest one of the most wonderful cities in the world.

Photo: Bea Kallos / MTI

Still, from a professional point of view, not one of these blockbusters was so successful among the films shot in Hungary as the drama of László Nemes Jeles, Son of Saul, which won the Oscar, and the award of the jury in Cannes before that.

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Dániel Kresmery, manager of Korda Studios, which gave place for most of these shootings, told Yahoo that Budapest became the second largest film platform in Europe after London “although we use only 75% of our capacity”. Besides the large film studio, that opened at the location of a former communist military base, the other reason for that is the tax law of 2004, which makes it possible for these shooting to write off 25% of their tax.

This way the Hungarian and international films shot here in 2016 brought an income of EUR 270 million, which is two and a half times more than the income of EUR 105 million in 2011. Ágnes Havas, manager of Hungarian National Film Fund said to Yahoo that this is the 0.15% of the Hungarian GDP, which is the biggest ratio compared to the other European countries.

There are about 100 companies working in the film industry in Hungary with roughly 4,000 employees.

Photo: maszol.ro

Copy editor: bm

Source: Index