Filmed in Canada, United States and Hungary: How Mayday brought the Cold War to life

Montreal served as the primary production base — a logical choice for a Cold War-era story requiring Eastern European textures on a North American schedule. The city has developed a production infrastructure, with generous Quebec tax credits drawing major productions consistently. Reynolds confirmed Montreal as a filming location when he posted from set in early 2024.

Montreal's Plateau-Mont-Royal district and its rows of grey-stone staircases, wrought-iron balconies and narrow brick streets have convincingly doubled for Soviet-era Eastern European cities in multiple productions. For a story set in 1987 Russia, the city's older neighbourhoods provide exactly the right baseline.

The crashed-plane sequences were filmed in the forests and snowscapes outside Montreal.

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San Diego provided the American military and naval sequences — the US Navy pilot world that establishes who Troy Kelly is before the mission goes wrong. San Diego is the single most concentrated piece of American naval infrastructure outside Washington DC and so a logical filming location.

Budapest was the final stage of filming, running through May and June 2024, with Reynolds and Blake Lively — and their four children — settling into the presidential suite of a central hotel for approximately a month. Reynolds, characteristically, had opinions about the city. "Loved every second working in Budapest," he said. "Many call it the 'Hawaii of Central Europe' and even though nobody calls it that, it's warm, and beautiful and endlessly fascinating."

The studio base was Korda Studios in Etyek, about 30 kilometres southwest of the city — the large-scale facility that has hosted Blade Runner 2049, The Martian and Red Sparrow, among dozens of other major productions. But a portion of the Budapest work moved into the city itself.

Production took over several central streets and areas around the Hungarian State Opera  — one of Budapest's grandest Neo-Renaissance landmarks — to some scenes. 

The crew also closed the area around Heroes' Square — Budapest's most monumental public space, flanked by the Museum of Fine Arts and the Hall of Art — and filmed scenes on Dózsa György út, the broad avenue running directly alongside the square. Heroes' Square, with its millennium monument and colonnade of Hungarian kings, photographs as pure Eastern European grandeur. 

Mayday premieres on Apple TV+ on September 4, 2026.