Here’s a quick guide to where fantasy movie Willow was filmed. Willow is the brainchild of Star Wars creator George Lucas who originally conceived the story back in the early 1970s. It would be over a decade later when the film finally went into production after Lucas met its star Warwick Davis while working on Return Of The Jedi - in which Davis played Wicket the Ewok - and reunited with his American Graffiti star Ron Howard, who was looking to direct a fantasy film.
The movie follows Warwick Davis’ Willow Ufgood – a sorcerer-in-training of the dwarf-like Nelwyn people who is tasked with returning a human baby girl prophesized to bring about the downfall of evil Queen Bavmorda (Jean Marsh) back to her people, the Daikini. Along the way, Willow teams with various characters to help him fulfill his quest, including Daikini swordsman Madmartigan (Val Kilmer) and a pair of mischievous brownies played by Kevin Pollak and Rick Overton.
Willow is set in an unnamed land retroactively referred to as Mother World in a trilogy of follow-up novels. Willow’s journey takes him through several fictional Mother World locations including his idyllic village in Nelwyn Valley, the neighboring kingdom of Tir Asleen and the foreboding land of Nockmaar, where the villainous Queen Bavmorda resides. While the interior scenes in Willow were filmed at Elstree Studios just outside London, other scenes were filmed at a mix of locations across the globe including the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, California and southern China.
Exterior scenes set in Willow Ufgood’s village were filmed at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire, although George Lucas and Ron Howard used footage of a region in southern China as a background plate in a shot of the Nelwyn Valley. Similarly, footage of Tongariro National Park on New Zealand’s North Island was used as a backdrop for Queen Bavmorda’s castle in Nockmaar, although the castle itself was a purpose-built façade located at Dinorwic Slate Quarry in Snowdonia National Park, Wales.
Other exterior scenes in Willow were filmed in and around Queenstown on New Zealand’s South Island, while the cart chase scene in which Willow and Madmartigan are pursued by the Queen’s soldiers was filmed in Epping Forest in Greater London. Two waterfalls appear in the movie – Burney Falls in California and Powerscourt Waterfall in County Wicklow, Ireland – while additional scenes were filmed in the woodland surrounding Skywalker Ranch in northern California.
Willow wasn’t a big hit with critics, nor was it the blockbuster the industry expected from a powerhouse production company like Lucasfilm. Nevertheless, in the years since its release Willow has become something of a cult classic and is about to get a sequel in the form of a Disney+ television series. Warwick Davis is set to reprise his titular role and it’s rumored the production may return to Wales to film the Willow sequel series.