Over the past decade, Abu Dhabi has quietly become one of Hollywood's most reliable filming locations. The emirate has stood in for a desert planet, a European gala, and a real Formula 1 season, often within the same year. Some of these shoots are obvious once you know to look for them. Others are buried so deep in the finished film that most viewers have no idea they're watching the UAE on screen.

Here's where six major productions actually filmed, and what happened while they were there.

Dune Trilogy (2021, 2024, 2026)

Before settling on a location for Arrakis, Denis Villeneuve's production designer, Patrice Vermette, scouted deserts in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Morocco. Liwa won because it offered a full 360-degree view of dunes in every direction, with some rising as high as 600 feet. That kind of unbroken sightline is hard to find, and it's the reason the crew kept coming back for three films in a row, including the finale, Dune: Part Three, set for release in December 2026.

The scale of the shoot grew with each installment. The first film spent about five days in the desert. By Part Three, the production had expanded to a 31-day shoot involving over 600 UAE-based crew, contractors, and interns.

Not every shot needed that scale. For one of the quieter character moments between Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya, cinematographer Greig Fraser described a much simpler setup: the crew walked two actors and a small camera team to the top of a dune and shot the scene right there. The production also based itself at Qasr Al Sarab, a resort built directly into the Liwa dunes, which kept cast and crew close enough to the shoot to avoid long daily commutes across the sand.

Now You See Me: Now You Don't (2025)

The third Now You See Me film uses Abu Dhabi for more than a few establishing shots. Several illusions were filmed inside the real Louvre Abu Dhabi, and the movie's climax takes place on the actual Yas Marina Circuit, staged as a fictional Formula 1 team party. The getaway involves the Horsemen driving off in a real F1 car before the chase spills onto the streets of Yas Island.

Abu Dhabi was part of the film from an early stage. The Abu Dhabi Film Commission began working with Lionsgate back in 2023, while the script was still being developed, helping the team scout locations well before cameras rolled. The Abu Dhabi portion of the shoot brought on 175 local crew members, including six young filmmakers who joined through an internship program run by the Creative Media Authority.

Fast & Furious 7 (2015)

The desert convoy scenes and the walk-up to Emirates Palace were shot on location in Abu Dhabi. The film's most famous moment wasn't. The car jumping between two towers of Etihad Towers was built on a soundstage in Atlanta, using 40-foot glass-and-steel rigs standing in for the real buildings. The production couldn't risk one of the cars: only seven Lykan HyperSports exist, and each one is worth $3.4 million.

The cars that did appear on the ground came from an Emirati company called PP-Performance, run by brothers Salah and Saif Almoudi. Their fleet supplied several of the supercars seen tearing across the desert, including a Bugatti Veyron and a Dodge Viper. Casting for the Abu Dhabi scenes started about a year before filming, with local agency Miranda Davidson Studios running open casting calls across the emirate and eventually placing more than 200 UAE-based extras in the film.

6 Underground (2019)

Ryan Reynolds spent a month in Abu Dhabi filming a heist that jumps between fictional countries, all shot across 24 locations in the emirate. For example, the Louvre stands in for a European gala. Michael Bay became the first director ever given permission to film inside the real Louvre Abu Dhabi, which had opened to the public just a year before shooting began.

Bay leaned into how much variety the emirate offered within a short drive. "It's very versatile to have a place where literally five minutes away it's like a different country," he said during filming, describing how the crew moved between Al Hamra's abandoned streets and other locations that stood in for Nigeria and Hong Kong. For one of the film's larger action sequences, the UAE military supported the production with six Apache helicopters and ten Black Hawks, a level of hardware the film's production designer said he'd never had access to before.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

The desert planet Jakku was filmed in the Rub' al Khali, also known as the Empty Quarter, part of the largest uninterrupted sand desert in the world. J.J. Abrams wanted the aerial shots of the Millennium Falcon to feel grounded, so local helicopter pilots flew him low over the dunes to capture the flight footage for real, without relying on composited backgrounds.

Abrams later described the shoot as a natural fit for the story he was telling. "Star Wars is a Western and a fairytale," he said, "shooting in Abu Dhabi was just that." The crew also used the pale, cracked terrain of the Al Wathba Fossil Dunes for parts of Jakku, giving the planet a second distinct texture beyond the golden sand of the Empty Quarter.

F1 (2025)

Brad Pitt's final race in the film was shot during the actual Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the last stop of the F1 season. Behind the scenes, the production built a fully collapsible pit garage designed to travel between eight countries over the course of the shoot. Assembling it the first time took three weeks. By the time the crew reached Abu Dhabi, they had the process down to nine days.

Director Joseph Kosinski spent months convincing Formula 1's leadership to let a film crew inside a sport built on secrecy, eventually screening an early cut of Top Gun: Maverick for F1's CEO to show what the finished product could look like. All ten real F1 teams agreed to give the production an hour of access each to film scenes on the actual grid, something no movie had done before during a live Grand Prix. When the film later premiered in Abu Dhabi, the celebration matched the ambition of the shoot: a 700-seat cinema was built directly on Turn 5 of the Yas Marina Circuit in just two weeks.

ADM: 202402335860

Contact us:

Explore Listings | Book Your Viewing Now | Contact for Consultation | 

+971 504494150

info@ibuyrealestate.ae

Visit our office on Saadiyat Island - Soho Square B, G09

YouTube:

How to Sell and Buy Secondary Property in Abu Dhabi | Step-by-Step Guide 2026

I Want This Beachfront Villa between Dubai and Abu Dhabi | Ohana Al Jurf

Most Affordable Waterfront Apartment Near Disneyland Abu Dhabi - From $310K | Luluat Marina 2026

Sobha City Abu Dhabi EXPOSED: Villas, Townhouses & Apartments Foreign Investors Are Rushing to Buy