Gothic fantasy Beautiful Creatures boasts some stunning scenery but where was the movie filmed? Based on the YA book of the same name by authors Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, Beautiful Creatures was adapted for the big screen by writer-director Richard LaGravenese in 2013. This fantasy romance tells the tale of Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich, Solo: A Star Wars Story) – a teenager living in a small Southern town who falls for a mysterious newcomer named Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert, Ratched) who just happens to have supernatural powers.
Garcia and Stohl’s book was a best-seller that spawned three more novels known as the Caster Chronicles and a spinoff series titled Dangerous Creatures. Beautiful Creatures didn’t translate very well to the big screen, however, and barely broke even at the box office. Even a supporting cast that included Oscar winners Viola Davis, Jeremy Irons, and Emma Thompson couldn’t do much to elevate the movie above mediocrity and any hopes of it launching an uber-successful YA franchise like the Twilight Saga or The Hunger Games were dashed.
Critics didn’t find many things right with Beautiful Creatures, but the sultry Southern Gothic setting conjured up by its cinematography did get a lot of praise. While the movie is set in the fictional town of Gatlin, South Carolina it was actually filmed on location in Louisiana – mostly in and around New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The picturesque town of Covington – located just north of Lake Pontchartrain – stood in for fictional Gatlin while the movie’s Civil War re-enactment scenes were filmed a couple of hours away in St. Francisville.
Scenes showing the exterior of Ravenswood Manor – the grand antebellum mansion where Lena lives with her uncle Macon (Jeremy Irons) – were filmed on the grounds of a house built in the 1830s on the outskirts of Baton Rouge in a town called Morganza. In New Orleans itself, houses in the city’s Garden District served as the exterior of Ethan and Mrs Lincoln’s (Emma Thompson) homes while the Prytania movie theater was where Ethan and Lena went on their first date.
Beautiful Creatures isn’t the only production to take advantage of the luscious Louisiana scenery surrounding New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Movies including Interview With A Vampire, 12 Years A Slave and Green Book alongside TV shows like True Blood, the third season of American Horror Story and – unsurprisingly – NCIS: New Orleans all feature scenes shot in the Big Easy and in and around Baton Rouge.