Despite a dismal 14 percent rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, The Electric State is already shaping up to be one of Netflix’s biggest original films of 2025. After releasing straight-to-streaming on Friday, the movie quickly shot to the top of Netflix’s trending titles list, where it seems it will remain for a good while.

Directed by Marvel alums Anthony and Joe Russo, and written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely—who adapted the screenplay from Simon Stålenhag’s graphic novel of the same name—The Electric State takes place in an alternate version of the ’90s, where robots staged an uprising against humans. Stranger Things‘s Millie Bobby Brown stars as a teenager named Michelle, who is on a mission to track down her missing brother, who may or may not be a robot.

Also starring Chris Pratt, Stanley Tucci, and a lot of other famous people with robotically distorted voices, The Electric State is reported to be Netflix’s most expensive movie to date, with an estimated production budget of $320 million. But even with all that money, The Electric State still went to film in Atlanta, for those sweet, sweet tax breaks.

Where was The Electric State filmed?

For the most part, The Electric State was filmed in front of green screens and on constructed sets and soundstages in Atlanta, Georgia. According to The Electric State production notes, production designers Dennis Gassner and Richard L. Johnson and their teams built over 100 sets over two years for the movie.

Some parts of The Electric State were filmed on location. The abandoned mall where the robot have found a home was filmed at a real, empty mall outside of Atlanta. According to the official movie production notes, “Empty restaurant spaces were reformatted to support the robots, including pizza ovens turned into metal recycling centers, and an old noodle bar transformed using colorful fiber-optic cables into a visually striking set piece that resembles hanging pasta.”

The Happyland amusement park—the abandoned theme park where Michelle and Keats go to find Dr. Amherst (Ke Huy Quan)—was a practical set built on a parking lot in southeast Atlanta. Some of the set, including the carousel, was re-used from the 2003 film Big Fish, on which Gassner was also a production designer.

Because the production was filmed the Happyland scenes around Halloween town, locals in Atlanta thought the set was a haunted house attraction. In an interview for The Electric State production notes, production designer Richard L. Johnson said, “They had to put up big signs: This is not a haunted house for the public.”

So there you have it. The Electric State, like many big action movies these days, was filmed, for the most part, in front of green screens and on sets in Atlanta. Sorry to ruin the movie magic!