With its breathtaking natural vistas, opulent homes, and throwback architectural charm you would think that Celebration Florida would be an ideal backdrop for a lot of Hollywood productions. Oddly enough, that's not the case. There are only a handful of films, documentaries, and short films set in the 34747. Let's explore.
We can start with full-length features. There is one movie set entirely in Celebration -- Sean Hackett's coming-of-age Homecoming. Filmed in 2011, it stars Brea Grant from Dexter and Eastsiders fame as an Army medic on leave visiting her mom -- Colleen Camp, B-movie star probably best known as the maid Yvette in Clue -- in their hometown of Celebration. The film doesn't appear to be available digitally, streaming, or on DVD in 2020, though it did generate some festival buzz when it was released in 2011.
Homecoming Trailer from Homecoming by Sean Hackett on Vimeo.
The trailer features a few neighborhoods and downtown shots including Celebration K-8, and what is now the Bohemian Hotel. An actual clip from the movie available online is filmed in Downtown Celebration.
Homecoming by Sean Hackett - Clip 1 from Homecoming by Sean Hackett on Vimeo.
Another film that was shot partly in Celebration -- and mostly in adjacent Old Town -- in 2015 is MarVista's Characterz, starring Mitch Musso of Hannah Montana fame. It details like as a costumed character actor at a fictional theme park, but school and residential scenes are shot in Celebration. The trailer doesn't feature any shots of Celebration, but at least the film is easily accessible online. It's currently available through Amazon Prime Video at no additional cost to Prime subscribers.
Moving on to documentaries, the most popular movie filmed partly in Celebration is the capitalism-skewering The Corporation. Spoiler alert: Celebration isn't portrayed in a positive light, but if you can look past that, shortly after the 1 hour, 19 minute mark you do see some archival footage of Goodings before it became Thai Thani as well as an early version of the Now Snowing holiday event.
There is also an entire documentary about Celebration called The Bubble. It's also not entirely flattering, but it obviously has a lot of great shots of the town that Disney built.
Moving on to short films, there are plenty of short-run videos shot in Celebration. Two that happened to be shot in the Lake Evalyn neighborhood is Mr. Bubbs by Todd Thompson in 2007 (there is some gore at the end of that clip, so just a heads up) and Just The Funny's Board to Death in 2020. Contrasting the two videos (Mr. Bubbs is filmed entirely on Lake Evalyn Drive and Board to Death's opening and closing shot also overlooks the lake) shows how foliage has fleshed out the place in the 13-year span.
There have also been several commercials films in Celebration, but for now we'll leave this here. We'll update this piece as we find more films shot in Celebration, Florida.
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