Downtown Melbourne provided a variety of locations for the final season of AMC drama Preacher, which aired in the U.S. in August 2019.
Rural Victoria doubled as Israeli desert fortress Masada. According to Sam Catlin, Preacher Executive Producer for Sony Pictures Television, Film Victoria’s incentives were instrumental in securing the shoot for the show’s final season.
“We chose Melbourne as our location because of the variety of environments we could access while there: top-of-the-line stages at Docklands Studios, a bustling city and the vast expanse of the outback,” says Catlin.
“Film Victoria also has excellent incentives that helped us make the most of our money while shooting in Melbourne.”
Catlin says Australia was surprisingly easy to fit into the Preacher world. “Melbourne is so close to myriad different environments and is such a diverse city that finding locations that would work for our scenes was no trouble,” he says. “We could place scenes in Israel or Australia or the U.S. and never have to worry that we wouldn’t be able to find the right spot in Melbourne. The process of filming itself was no sweat. It was just like shooting at home, if not easier.”
Much of the action in Preacher’s final season centres around Masada, which is based on an actual location in Israel. “As such, whenever shooting exteriors around Masada we needed to find locations that could replicate that feeling of an expansive desert,” Catlin explains. “We needed to find wide open locations where we could construct entire buildings like the Holy Bar and Grail that are located around Masada.
“We also had to do a lot of work in the city though as Jesse finds himself wandering Melbourne in search of God,” he says. “That required a lot of very specific spots: a police station, a synagogue, a chunk of metropolitan area where we could shoot a car chase.
“We made some tall orders but being our last season we wanted to go out with a bang and I feel like, in terms of location, we definitely got what we were hoping for.”
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