Tom Hardy may stalk a snow-slick, corrupt American metropolis in Havoc, but almost every brick and bollard on screen belongs to South Wales. Director–writer Gareth Evans spent 11 months scouring his home patch for façades that could pass for New York or Detroit, then let production design and VFX do the rest. The result, released worldwide on Netflix last week, is a muscular calling-card for Welsh locations and studio infrastructure.
Cardiff doubles for America
The production’s urban spine is Cardiff, where American road signs, yellow cabs and a foot of artificial snow transformed Bute Street in Butetown into a midnight boulevard straight out of Chicago. Nearby, the red‑brick Pierhead Building in Cardiff Bay provided interiors for the movie’s police precinct, while Associated British Ports’ docks hosted Luis Guzmán’s junk‑yard hide-out. Most interior sets—including a two‑storey nightclub rigged for a 10‑minute brawl—were built at Seren Stiwdios (formerly Pinewood Studio Wales) on the city’s eastern fringe.
Scenes from Swansea
Forty miles west, Swansea subbed in for City Hall and convenience‑store fronts. The neoclassical Brangwyn Hall and Swansea Guildhall became the mayor’s headquarters and precinct exteriors, while Fabian Way outside Swansea University staged a limousines‑and‑motorbikes ambush bolstered with digital traffic. Even the tiki bar Kon Tiki on The Strand was redressed as a grimy corner shop for a Christmas‑Eve robbery.
Rural sets and final showdown
When the script demanded rural isolation, the crew moved to the dunes and woodlands of Merthyr Mawr near Bridgend, erecting a fishing‑shack compound that is obliterated in the film’s bullet‑riddled finale. The climactic showdown was shot 20 km east at the Baglan rail‑yard in Port Talbot, chosen for its “unexpectedly American” stacks of timber and freight cars. A brief carnival sequence was captured at Barry Island Pleasure Park, its 19th‑century rides lit with frost‑coated neon to evoke a decaying boardwalk.
“We looked at Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, then realised we could stitch the feel of those cities together right here.”
A hopeful future for Welsh screen tourism
Evans estimates that only “30–40 per cent” of each frame is pure Wales, the rest augmented in post-production, but insists the project could not have been mounted elsewhere. With Havoc streaming at No. 1 on Netflix and producer Ed Talfan calling it “one of the biggest films ever made in Wales,” Cardiff Bay hopes the transformation from docklands to dystopia will lure more big-budget productions and screen tourists across the Severn.
