Sumith Prasad
In FX on Hulu’s psychological thriller series ‘A Murder at the End of the World,’ tech billionaire Andy Ronson hosts a retreat at his elegant hotel in Iceland. The guests invited to take part in the retreat, including the amateur detective and murder mystery author Darby Hart, get captivated by the establishment’s beauty and look forward to spending a few days in the same. The hotel’s isolated location makes the show eerie and enhances the murder mystery it presents. As the show progresses, the hotel becomes as important as a character as it hides the secrets the killer harbors!
Andy Ronson’s Hotel Doesn’t Really Exist
Andy Ronson’s captivating hotel doesn’t exist in reality. The exterior of the hotel is seemingly CGI. The scenes that are set inside the hotel, on the other hand, were shot in a production studio located in the state of New Jersey. Although a portion of the series was filmed in Iceland, the production department must have decided against filming extensively in a real hotel in the European country due to the immense costs, which explains why the interior scenes were shot on sound stages. The scenes filmed in Iceland must be limited to exterior ones, which encapsulate the region’s vast snow-covered wastelands.
Irrespective of the hotel’s existence in reality, the same holds an integral place in the narrative of the psychological thriller. The constrained space within the hotel dictates the tension in the murder mystery as the killer and the investigator, Darby Hart, live very near. Co-creator Zal Batmanglij was seemingly inspired by the narrative use of the British manor in Robert Altman’s murder mystery film ‘Gosford Park’ to put his characters inside a tech retreat.
“When we started working with this in 2019, we also felt that people were looking to each other and trying to figure out who done it. If the British manor house was the old seat of power where Gosford Park was set, for example, then the modern seat of power might be at a technologist’s retreat,” he told Vanity Fair about the location’s significance. The high-end hotel’s facilities and amenities, as far as technology was concerned, align exceptionally with the presence of tech throughout the narrative.
Even though Ronson’s hotel is not real, visitors to Fljot Valley won’t need to struggle to find a cozy establishment to stay in. The Valley is home to Deplar Farm, an establishment included in Condé Nast Traveler’s 2023 list of “Best Hotels in the World.” Like the tech billionaire’s property, Deplar Farm is built at the foot of the mountains, offering breathtaking views of the valley. The establishment’s structure and design do remind us of Ronson’s hotel in the show.
Read More: A Murder at the End of the World: How Much of it is Real?
