Newly released footage now documents the North African ‘Hollywood in the Desert,’ where hundreds of blockbuster TV shows and movies, including Game of Thrones, Gladiator and The Mummy were filmed.
Atlas Studios was used in countless productions after opening in 1983 in Ouarzazete, Morocco. Plenty of fake blood has been spilled in the temples and training grounds of this vast, but now abandoned, movie set.
Photographer Bob Thissen, 31, discovered the faded glamour of the site earlier this month. “It was cool to find such a big movie set abandoned and left alone in the desert,” Thissen said.
Thissen, a so-called urban explorer, first discovered the sites on Google Earth and was uncertain whether they’d still be standing when he arrived. “Most movie sets are located near the active studios and can be visited legally, but some are remote, abandoned and decayed,” he explained. “I tried my luck and went there, hoping it was abandoned, forgotten, and not demolished.”
Some of the many productions filmed at Atlas Studios include:
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Patton
• Gladiator
• Game of Thrones
• Ben Hur
• The Jewel of the Nile
• The Living Daylights
• The Mummy
• Kingdom of Heaven
• Babel
• Atlantis
• The Amazing Race 10
• The Grand Tour
—RealClearLife
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