California's Salinas Valley was filmed in New Zealand: The locations of East of Eden

The production teams took over Oamaru's Victorian Precinct for two weeks in January 2025, transforming it into the most convincingly period-accurate filming environment on the production's entire schedule. Streets were covered with gravel to take them back in time. Period vehicles, horses and hundreds of extras filled the precinct. Local men grew beards specifically for roles as background characters – Waitaki Mayor Gary Kircher told RNZ's Morning Report in January that he had noticed the change in town. "They're making use of the background of our heritage buildings but they're covering several streets with gravel so it takes it back in time," he said. "And just all the equipment that has to back that up – from catering through to the hundreds of extras and of course there's a lot of horses needing to be involved."

Key Oamaru locations included the Harbourside and Scottish Hall. In the Victorian Precinct, the frontage of Taste Merchants – a popular local store selling retro vinyls, antiques and Kiwiana – was transformed into the fictional Costumers and Milliners store. Across from the courthouse, the rebranded shopfront became part of the early California streetscape that the production was building across the entire precinct.

Locations manager Phil Turner was direct about what made Oamaru irreplaceable: "These are incredibly unique locations that can replicate period settings in a way that's very difficult to achieve elsewhere. You'd almost have to build a set to match somewhere like the Oamaru Historic Precinct."

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The cast and crew spent a weekend filming in central Dunedin while based on the South Island. The Dunedin Railway Station – the Flemish Renaissance building whose ornate stone facade and interior mosaic floors make it one of the most photographed buildings in New Zealand – was used as a background location. Queen's Garden, the Victorian-era public park in the heart of the city, was used as a period-accurate backdrop for promenade scenes and general exterior sequences.

A local store's - Taste Merchants - frontage was transformed for the production in the area across from the courthouse. Dunedin's hinterlands also provided landscape work.. Turner said Dunedin's particular combination of period architecture and varied surrounding landscape gave the production a visual range that few locations could match.

The cast and crew spent a further fortnight filming in the Maniototo – the high, semi-arid plateau in Central Otago between Naseby and Ranfurly. The Maniototo is one of New Zealand's most visually distinctive interior landscapes: its wide open tussock plains, its curling clubs and its small farming towns suggest a 19th-century world that has changed slowly.

East of Eden premieres on Netflix in fall 2026.