Looper Filming Locations: Where Was The Rian Johnson Time Travel Thriller Filmed?
Andrew Henderson
Published Mar 28, 2026
Rian Johnson took it upon himself to build success as a director when he teamed up with Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a time-travel sci-fi thriller called Looper. Today, we’re going to travel to the filming locations of this movie that puts us in the American heartland in the context of a dystopic world.
In Looper, a group of contract killers is hired to get rid of the worst of the worst, but they do so in a clever way, by time traveling. With a great performance by Gordon-Levitt and the usual tough guy persona of the sadly now aphasic Bruce Willis, this 2012 production had Steve Yedlin as head cinematographer, a man whose work is credited with box-office hits like “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”, and Knives Out”.
Looper Filming Locations
Produced by TriStar Pictures, DMG Entertainment, Endgame, and Film District, this movie premiered in 2012 under a budget of $30 million, managing to make $176 million at the box office. Written and directed by Rian Johnson. Main photography kicked off in early January 2011, and the film was filmed in the Southern United States and China. Now, let’s take an in-depth look at these locations.
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New Orleans
While Looper’s story takes place in a futuristic and dystopic Kansas, the main photography of this Rian Johnson film takes place in Louisiana, more specifically in New Orleans. In it, we see many shots of the iconic Mississippi River, its urban setting streets of the inner city, and the skyline of the city with some intense CGI effects.
As stated earlier, the bulk of the movie was filmed in downtown New Orleans, but thanks to the magic of great production, you wouldn’t notice it was filmed there.
New Orleans is a vibrant city, full of culture. The Louisiana territories were purchased by then-president Thomas Jefferson from France in 1803 for a meager $15 million. What Jefferson didn’t know at the time was that that purchase expanded the territories of the United States from Louisiana, all the way to the Canadian border, stretching to the Gulf of Mexico and the Rocky Mountains.
New Orleans is home to a mixture of French and American culture. It is the home of musical genres like jazz, and its internationally known Mardi Gras festival. In this city, many films have been shot, like the Academy Award-winning “Dallas Buyers Club” starring Matthew McConaughey, “Deepwater Horizon” starring Matt Damon, and Dead Man Walking starring Susan Sarandon.
Thibodaux & Napoleonville
Thibodaux is a city in the Bayou Lafourche parish in Louisiana; it was chosen by Johnson as another filming site because of its gritty, inner-city look and appeal. It was also the inspiration for movies like “Fletch Lives” and the video game “The Lightning I” by Arcade Fire.
Because Louisiana used to be a French colony, it is no surprise that lots of cities and towns have French and Creole names. One of the other places chosen by Johnson and his crew was Napoleonville, a small town in the Assumption Parish of only 600 residents.
Here’s a fun fact about Napoleonville: it was founded in 1807 by a French veteran who served in the French army in honor of Napoleon Bonaparte; before it was known by that name, it was simply called by the locals “The Canal” as it served as river post that connected to Lake Verret.
China
After shooting in the United States, the cast and crew went to the People’s Republic of China to do some outdoor shots in Shanghai. The movie plot takes the characters chasing bad guys all over the place, and one of those places is this Chinese metropolis. In the movie’s climactic final scene, we see the Huangpu River’s west bank.
Shanghai is both a business center as well as one of China’s most densely populated cities, and it is also the place where great productions like “Empire of the Sun”, “Fist of Fury”, “Skyfall”, “The Painted Veil”, and “Ip Man 3”. Johnson chose Shanghai not only because of the appeal of the streets but also because Chinese investors in the film moved some strings to bring the American film industry to that location.
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Alberto Zambrano
Alberto Zambrano is a Venezuelan writer with 10 years of experience in the field. He specializes in writing gossip and entertainment from streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+.
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