On Location: The Orient Express Goes Off the Rails in ‘Mission: Impossible 7'

"We wanted to find one of the most spectacular airports in the world to serve as the backdrop for this big and chaotic chase sequence, and supervising location manager, David Campbell Bell came across the amazing Midfield Terminal at Abu Dhabi International Airport that had yet to open. Shooting in airports is notoriously difficult, because you have thousands of paying travelers and most airports are open 24/7 these days. There’s also the security side of things. For us to be able to get time in what is probably one of the most spectacular buildings, let alone airports, I have ever been in was incredible. It’s almost a mile from one terminal to another terminal, it was so vast. This gave us a unique opportunity to shoot in this amazing and never-been-seen-before location. We were shooting in the terminal, in the baggage handling, out on the tarmac with the planes, and on the roof. There was no duty-free high-end shopping yet, and we knew we needed that aspect for [Hunt] to use as a hiding place. We had to install everything—our set decorator, Raffaella Giovannetti, had a lot of contacts in Italy and we were able to get all of the branding to make it look like everything was up and running."