Return of Shot on Site Summer - Ghostbusters 2016 Locations, Part 3 (Movie Rundown)

Welcome to Spook Central's continuing Return of Shot on Site Summer event wherein we take a look at all of the filming locations for Paul Feig's 2016 Ghostbusters (aka Ghostbusters: Answer The Call). Every Sunday - henceforth dubbed Shot on Site Sundays - at Noon (Eastern) for several weeks (all parts available here in reverse order), we will go through the entire movie from start to finish telling and showing you where everything was filmed in or around Boston, Massachusetts; with a great deal of quick shots in Manhattan, New York; and one spot in Los Angeles, California. We will be utilizing the Theatrical and Extended cuts of the movie from the Blu-ray, as that provides the most locations than just the Theatrical Cut alone. With that in mind, SPOILER WARNING if you read any further... though I suspect that whomever wants to see the movie already has, and those who want to avoid it won't care. Those in the latter camp have probably stopped reading this post already. That's cool. There's lots of material on Spook Central about the original movies and animated series for you to look at.

The majority of locations were identified and researched by Matthew Jordan back in 2016, way before anyone else did it. Secondary thanks go to all of the fine folks on the internet who documented the filming of the movie in 2015, which helped in Matt's research. A few locations were identified by me (Paul Rudoff) and MrMichaelT. The title graphic seen at the top was created by Matthew Jordan, based on an idea by Paul Rudoff. Now that that's out of the way, let us continue...

The real estate agent manages to find them a place in their price range: the upper floor of Zhu's Authentic Hong Kong Food restaurant.


If you want some Chinese food from Zhu's, don't bother going to New York. You'll have to go to Kaze Shabu Shabu at 1 Harrison Avenue in Boston. Later on, we'll see the building across the street, and I'll cover it just for fun. We also get to see some of the other shops down the block, and those I will cover when they appear later, too. Also, notice the two Asian ladies walking in the foregound? You will see them again in a near-identical shot later on. Either these two ladies love hanging around the place, or we spotted a goof :-)


The ladies hire a secretary, based solely on his looks and not his skills. MTA worker Patty takes them into the Subway to examine the spooky goings-on. They all meet back at Zhu's, and Patty decides to join the team, furnishing them with a vehicle on loan from her uncle. With the business now on track, Jillian designs them some equipment, which they test out in an alley behind the restaurant.




All of the scenes in this alley were part of reshoots done in May 2016, as it was felt that there needed to be an explanation of the equipment to flesh out the story. In what came as a complete shock to ALL of us who have been researching these locations, this alley is not in Boston or Manhattan, but actually in Los Angeles, California. You'll find the alley directly across from the "St. Vincent Court" shopping plaza/underpass at 317 West 7th Street. The other end of the alley (where the action took place) opens to a parking lot around 735 South Hill Street. You see the "St. Vincent Court" sign in the background of the second movie shot above, which was one of the keys to the identification. The other was a yellow ATM machine (next to a "Garments, Clubs, Shops, Restaurants" sign) at the edge of the parking lot on Hill Street. L.A. played a significant part in the filming of both original movies.



Here we see Kristen Wiig across the street from the parking lot on Hill Street that the alley opens up to. Notice the yellow ATM and red-and-black sign behind her.




Rowan goes to a rock concert at the Stonebrook Theatre to place one of his devices.


The Stonebrook is actually the Wang Theater at 270 Tremont Street in Boston.


A little while later, the ladies get a call from the Stonebrook's manager, so they go to check it out. In the Extended Cut, Erin's boyfriend Phil is standing across the street waiting for her.


I wasn't going to cover this since it's just across the street from Kaze Shabu Shabu, which as previously-mentioned, doubles as Zhu's. But since it dominates the scene with Erin and Phil, I thought I'd give it a little attention. In the background is the century-old Verizon switching station at Chauncy and Essex Streets in Boston (we see the Chauncy side). Thanks to recent advances in phone switching, Verizon no longer needed all that space, so on February 7, 2017, the Zoning Board of Appeals approved plans to convert the top three floors into 46 apartments.


Jillian pulls up in the new Ecto-1, which is her tricked-out design of the hearse Patty got from her uncle. Enroute to the gig, they pass by several familiar locations.



The camera starts on the back of the Municipal building (more on that in a bit) and then pans down to the car driving past 60 East Broadway in Manhattan.


The car's fancy schmancy new ghost hood ornament is shown in close-up.


You wouldn't think this would be identifiable, but thanks to what I saw in the blurry background, we got it! In the background is, obviously, a theater featuring the play "Fiddler on the Roof". A quick look-up of theaters hosting that play at the time of filming told us that the car is heading west on West 53rd Street, passing Broadway and the Broadway Theater.


The car drives down a street in Chinatown.


The car is at 1 Eldridge Street (about to turn onto Division Street) in Manhattan, and if they keep driving straight, and then make a right, they'd be on Broadway at the exact spot seen a few shots earlier.


Does the little ghost hunting club ever make it to the Stonebrook? Find out next week - same ghost time, same ghost channel - when we continue our look at the filming locations from Ghostbusters (2016).