Loki Season 2 director Dan DeLeeuw has revealed how a disused Indian restaurant was converted into a McDonald’s for the hit Marvel TV series.
Speaking exclusively to TechRadar, DeLeeuw explained Marvel’s failure to modernize an operating McDonald’s restaurant. Loki season 2. As a solution, the Disney subsidiary hunted down an abandoned building in London – the second season of the Disney Plus show was filmed in and around the British capital – to turn it into an ’80s-style McDonald’s to make.
Luckily, Marvel’s location scouts came across an empty curry house just outside of London, and it didn’t take long for the crew of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) TV show to agree that it was the right location.
“It had been vacant for a while,” DeLeeuw revealed. “But what (production designer) Kasra Farahani pointed out was that the front of it had windows with round metal frames, which was very characteristic of the 1980s McDonald’s sign, and they are not easy to find.”
Farahani and his team spent weeks converting the unused building into a McDonald’s set Loki‘s second season, and their hard work has paid off. The repurposed restaurant was revealed in all its glory in the post-credits scene of Loki Season 2, episode 1, where Sylvie came to the diner to grab some fast food.
If Loki The official trailer for season 2 has been revealed and viewers have now seen the second episode, but Sylvie remains stuck at the location. She even gets hired there as she settles into a quieter life, away from the multiversal shenanigans she got involved in during Loki season 1. Unfortunately for Sylvie, Loki and Mobius track her down in the Marvel Phase 5 series to enlist her help in finding a cure for the collapse of the multiverse.
Actors working on Marvel projects have become accustomed to shooting in front of blue and green screens throughout the lifespan of the MCU. However, DeLeeuw, an MCU visual effects (VFX) veteran who made his official directorial debut on Loki season 2, episode 2, was happy that not only did he have a physical location to film in, but also that it was a McDonald’s full of nostalgia.
“The great thing about shooting on location is that you can stage everything in the parking lot,” he said. “We had a field across the street and you could shoot from the McDonald’s into the parking lot, so it worked great.
“To outfit the restaurant, Kasra worked with the folks at McDonald’s to give it a nostalgic feel. They went into their archives and pulled out all kinds of artwork. Kasra was also able to create the actual wallpaper, chairs, fabric from the cushions and all the other iconography. We even found a mold for the Hamburglar so Kasra could make one himself to place in the restaurant. I don’t know where it went after we finished filming. It’s probably in storage or someone else’s house! – but it was a truly amazing experience recreating it all.”
For more coverage in our exclusive chat with DeLeeuw, read his thoughts on Marvel’s overworked VFX artists and why he thinks the problem is so “systemic” within the broader entertainment industry. And be sure to check back with TechRadar in the coming weeks for other exclusive offers from Loki season 2 executive producer Kevin R. Wright and Farahani himself.