Photo courtesy of HBO/Craig Blankenhorn
Additional research by Katelyn McHale
Sometimes it seems you can’t go a week around Westchester without driving by the increasingly familiar sight of buildings and neighborhoods besieged by Klieg lights, boom mikes, dolly tracks, and cherry-pickers. It’s not your imagination: The film-and-TV industry has virtually exploded in the 914 in recent years, with 2019 having seen 40% more production days than the year before, location inquiries up 28%, county-owned property film permits up 70%, and a roughly $30 million annual revenue boon to the local economy.
Indeed, the 21st-century entertainment industry has been good to Westchester, attracting some of Hollywood’s top talent, like Steven Spielberg, who brought Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks to our county for 2002’s Catch Me if You Can. Megastar Tom Cruise also alit on the county, for Spielberg’s War of the Worlds in 2005. Hanks returned here for yet another Spielberg project, with 2017’s The Post, costarring Meryl Streep (who had already shot parts of The Manchurian Candidate here in 2004 and It’s Complicated in 2009).
Not to be outdone, fellow film titan Martin Scorsese has also made return engagements to the county, filming parts of The Departed (2006), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), and The Irishman (2019) here, schlepping the likes of De Niro, DiCaprio, Damon, and Nicholson along with him. But that’s far from all. Other notable films that have been partly or entirely shot or set in Westchester include:
But the best news may be still to come. Lionsgate Films plans to launch a $100 million, 10-acre, three-story, multistage (plus backlot) facility near Yonkers’ Larkin Plaza in the fall, a move that Yonkers mayor Mike Spano called “a game-changer for the city of Yonkers.” But even without our own movie studio, the fact is, the faces and places of Westchester County circle the globe every single day.
Finding Forrester (2000)
28 Days (2000)
Meet the Parents (2000)
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Zoolander (2001)
Unfaithful (2002)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Hitch (2005)
Freedomland (2006)
The Good Shepherd (2006)
I Am Legend (2007)
American Gangster (2007)
Doubt (2008)
Fair Game (2010)
Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010)
The Adjustment Bureau (2011)
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
The Intern (2015)
The Girl on the Train (2016)
The Goldfinch (2019)
Hustlers (2019)
Small Screen, Big Results
Though the movies got a big head start, TV came roaring up as of 2010, essentially overtaking its big-screen counterpart in terms of exploiting Westchester as a prime filming location. Thanks to the broadcast networks, premium cable stations, and, most recently, streaming services like Netflix, Westchester County is ready for its close-up and poised to be more famous than ever. Here are just some of the TV series that have filmed here in recent years:
CBS: The Good Wife, Person of Interest, Elementary, Madam Secretary, Bull
NBC: Law & Order: SVU, The Blacklist, Blindspot
FOX: Gotham, The Following
HBO: Boardwalk Empire, The Leftovers, Girls, Divorce
FX: The Americans, Pose
SHOWTIME: Homeland, Billions, Ray Donovan, The Affair, Escape at Dannemora
USA: The Sinner, Mr. Robot, Royal Pains
NETFLIX: Orange Is the New Black, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Jessica Jones, Daredevil, Luke Cage, You
