Ryan Reynolds’ New Cold War Comedy Turned Budapest Into Moscow, and You Can Visit Every Set
If you were wandering around Heroes’ Square in the spring of 2024 and stumbled onto a Soviet military parade, complete with red-starred tanks, fluttering hammer-and-sickle flags, and a missile-like vehicle rolling through the city centre, you weren’t losing your mind. You were watching Budapest get turned into Red Square for Mayday, Apple TV’s new Cold War action comedy starring Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh, which premiered globally on Apple TV on September 4, 2026. For anyone visiting the Hungarian capital, the film offers a genuinely fun excuse to see the city’s most photogenic landmarks through a completely different lens.
What Mayday Is Actually About
Mayday follows Lieutenant Troy “Assassin” Kelly, a hotshot US Navy pilot played by Reynolds, who is sent on a top-secret mission into Russian territory at the height of the Cold War. When the operation collapses, Troy finds himself stranded behind enemy lines, only to be discovered by Nikolai Ustinov, a gruff, America-obsessed ex-KGB agent played by Branagh. What starts as captor-and-captive turns into one of the more unexpected buddy pairings of the year, as the two men are forced into an uneasy alliance to survive. The cast also includes Maria Bakalova, Marcin Dorociński, and David Morse, and the film was written and directed by Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the duo behind Game Night. At just under two hours, it leans hard into eighties needle drops, big practical-feeling action, and a chemistry between its two leads that critics have generally praised, even if the humor occasionally outruns the plot.
Heroes’ Square Becomes Red Square
The most striking transformation happened at Heroes’ Square, one of Budapest’s most recognizable public spaces and normally home to the Millennium Monument and its row of statues honoring Hungary’s historic leaders. For Mayday, the square was dressed as Moscow’s Red Square for a sprawling May Day military parade sequence, reportedly filled with military vehicles, period-correct props, and enough Soviet iconography to make the square nearly unrecognisable for a few weeks. Nearby stretches of Andrássy Avenue and Dózsa György Road were also used to round out the Moscow illusion. If you walk through Heroes’ Square today, it’s worth pausing to picture it under red flags instead of the usual crowd of tourists and skateboarders.
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Beyond the Capital: Dunaújváros and Korda Studios
Budapest wasn’t the only Hungarian location doing the heavy lifting. The industrial city of Dunaújváros, south of the capital, became one of the film’s most convincing Soviet-era backdrops, with production centered on Vasmű Road and the Lower Danube promenade for a tense action sequence involving a ballistic missile carrier rumbling down a red-flag-lined street. Meanwhile, the bulk of the studio work happened at Korda Studios in Etyek, roughly 25 kilometers west of Budapest and one of the largest film production complexes in Central Europe. With seven soundstages, permanent backlots, and extensive workshop space, Korda Studios has become a go-to facility for major international productions looking to build entire historical worlds from scratch.
Why International Productions Keep Choosing Budapest
Mayday is only the latest example of Hungary’s growing reputation as a stand-in for practically anywhere and any era. Reynolds himself later posted a photo from his weeks in the city, writing that he loved every second of working there, and it’s easy to see why productions keep coming back. Budapest offers grand, controllable public squares, a mix of nineteenth-century and Soviet-era architecture that can pass for Moscow with the right dressing, experienced local crews, and studio infrastructure like Korda Studios that can handle everything from tank chases to interior sets. It’s the same combination of monumental streetscapes and production-friendly logistics that has drawn dozens of international films and series to the city over the years, and Mayday adds one more high-profile title to that growing list.
Tracking Down Budapest’s Film History Yourself
If Mayday has you wondering what else was filmed around the corner from your hotel, there’s now an easy way to check. A free interactive tool called Movie Scene Map has catalogued more than 15,000 real filming locations across 166 countries, letting users search by title or zoom into a specific city to see what was shot there, complete with photos and background details. Budapest alone is linked to 103 productions on the platform, making it the 40th most-filmed city in the world according to the site’s data, alongside heavyweights like Game of Thrones, The Matrix, Harry Potter and Jurassic Park. The database currently covers over 9,000 films and series, plus video games, anime and manga settings, though it isn’t exhaustive, so a few locations may still be missing. There’s also a daily geography game called FilmGuessr built into the site, where players try to pinpoint the filming location of five productions on a world map for a shot at up to 5,000 points. It’s completely free, requires no sign-up, and comes with no ads, making it a fun way to fill a coffee break while planning which Budapest filming spots to add to your own itinerary.
Whether you’re watching Mayday before your trip or stumbling across a familiar square mid-movie, the film is a reminder of how much of Budapest’s everyday scenery has quietly doubled as somewhere else on screen. Heroes’ Square as Red Square is just the latest, and probably not the last, disguise the city has worn for Hollywood.
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