Germany loves Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel scores big in the country where it was shot

Writer-director Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel is heading for $100 million at the overseas box office, and it’s getting a boost from Germany, where it was shot.

The quirky R-rated comedy is up to $89 million from overseas with top markets Japan and Brazil still to come in.

It’s scored $140 million worldwide so far, and is the highest-grossing movie ever for the director of The Royal Tenenbaums.

The Grand Budapest Hotel was financed and filmed almost entirely in Germany, in the Saxony town of Gorlitz, which borders Poland. That proved ideal for a film set in the fictional central European country of Zubrowka, on the eve of war in the late 1930s. In it, Ralph Fiennes stars as the concierge of an elegant resort. He is joined by a raft of famous co-stars including Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Jude Law, Jeff Goldblum, Owen Wilson and Tom Wilkinson .

The local connection has helped at the box office in Germany, which is the No. 1 foreign territory for Grand Budapest.

By the way, don’t bother looking for the hotel from the film if you happen to find yourself in Saxony. The interiors were shot in a Goritz department store, and the hotel in the movie was actually a miniature. Reuters

Grand Budapest is now playing in UAE theatres.