in the United States, Trilith, the city whose cinema is the superhero

It is a stretch of road lined with concrete blocks and construction barriers. On the right, diggers are busy in a large sand quarry. On the left, a short, wide cobbled street leads to a village square. There is a sculpture of questionable taste, a fountain, grass, benches and a giant screen that plays idyllic images of picnics on lawns, immaculate houses caressed by the setting sun and families of all the colors wandering all smiles in well-maintained streets. On the sidewalks, facing the few restaurants and shops, passers-by chat, seated at high wooden tables whose seats are swings.

Cars are rare. On the other hand, it is difficult to miss the little white robot which distributes to local residents, at any time of the day and night, the “real food and ecologically correct products” from the local grocery store. Everything is new, everything is clean. To the south, the main street becomes residential. It is 5 p.m., two or three fishermen are trying their luck at the edge of the lake. Others jog or walk babies in pushchairs. In the background, cars race down Veterans Parkway, the artery that borders the city.

On the other side of the road, an anthill: Trilith Studios, one of the largest film studios in the world. The day of filming costs 150,000 dollars on average (147,433 euros). A price that is aimed more at blockbusters than independent cinema. Black Panther. Wakanda Forever, Avengers, Captain America. Civil War, Spider-Man. Homecomingbut also the series Wanda Vision, ms Marvel, she hulk (broadcast since August 17 on Disney+): Some of the biggest blockbusters of the decade were filmed here.

Funny print

“Town at Trilith” (“Trilith, the City”), the urban side of the studios of the same name, came out of the ground in barely four years. About forty kilometers from Atlanta (Georgia), in the middle of the American South, this neat decor gives off a funny feeling: it’s almost hard to believe that real people live real lives in these houses as perfect as models. of architect. We believe in Tea Truman Show (1998), the film by Peter Weir, in which Jim Carrey played the role of a young man who discovered that his whole life was one vast reality TV show.

The city of Trilith was first thought of as a backyard of the studios of the same name. The lake served as San Francisco Bay for the film Ant Man (2015), the nearby cemetery appears in Spiderman. No Way Home (2021) and the fantasy land of Wakanda, in Black Panther (2018), is actually a corner of the nearby forest (in addition to the 120 hectares of land built or under construction, Trilith has 160 more around the studios).

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