Naman Shrestha
The Oz Rodriguez directorial, Hulu’s ‘Miguel Wants to Fight’ is a coming-of-age comedy movie that centers upon a 17-year-old boy named Miguel who asks for the assistance of his three best friends — David, Cass, and Srini — to get him in his first fight before he moves to a new city. Even after growing up in a rough neighborhood where fighting is as common as breathing, Miguel is yet to find himself in one. It doesn’t bother him until a series of unfortunate events turn things around for the worse.
Miguel and his best friends decide to enter into several hilarious misadventures themselves as he prepares himself to get into the first fight of his entire life. Featuring hilarious onscreen performances by Tyler Dean Flores, Christian Vunipola, Imani Lewis, and Suraj Partha, the comedy movie mostly unfolds in the neighborhood of Miguel’s residence and the high school he attends, making the audience wonder where ‘Miguel Wants to Fight’ was filmed.
Miguel Wants to Fight Filming Locations
‘Miguel Wants to Fight’ was filmed entirely in New York, specifically in Syracuse and Liverpool. As per reports, principal photography for the comedy movie commenced in late May 2022 and wrapped up in late June of the same year. Now, without wasting time, let’s traverse all the specific locations where Miguel trains and attempts to indulge in fights in the Hulu movie!
Syracuse, New York
Several portions of ‘Miguel Wants to Fight’ were lensed in Syracuse, the county seat of New York State’s Onondaga County. The filming unit reportedly traveled across the city to record various scenes against suitable backdrops. During a conversation with The Knockturnal in August 2023, the filmmaker Oz Rodriguez talked about some fun memories the cast and crew shared while shooting the movie.
Rodriguez said, “It was amazing, like this movie, you know these actors have to look like they’ve been friends all their life, and obviously there’s a lot of jokes that they have to land. But they also, there’s an extra commitment. You know Tyler, who plays Miguel, had to train for two months on these action scenes, and everybody sort of committed to the action part and the stunts. So, I can’t thank them enough because that is hard. That means you like, you know, on the weekends, he’s like throwing kicks and stretching and having to work on being the best Bruce Lee he can be.”
Liverpool, New York
A significant chunk of ‘Miguel Wants to Fight’ was taped in the lakeside village of Liverpool, just north of Syracuse. Apart from shooting in and around Liverpool High School at 4338 Wetzel Road, the production team also set up camp in Syracuse Studios at 800 4th Street and primarily utilized the American High School building within the studio complex. Stretched to 100,000 square feet, the film studio complex houses several pre-built and high school sets, including multiple classrooms and hallways, a computer lab, a cafeteria, a 500-seat auditorium, and a full basketball gymnasium. All these amenities make it suitable for a production like ‘Miguel Wants to Fight.’
In the interview mentioned above, Oz Rodriguez was even asked if there were any setbacks he ran into on set. He responded, “…So yeah, so, for example, the last scene of the movie where they reunite with that kind of local bully. We had two days to shoot that, but it soon became one and a half days because we got a tornado warning. So we had to leave set. So that meant we had to sort of approach the scene in a different way and figure out how to shoot it a little more efficiently and a little faster. It was going to be a bigger scene, a bigger fight, but I think sometimes those things end up helping it. Now it’s just what it needs to be. So yeah, we also shot during the pandemic, so a lot of people were going down with COVID left and right. So yeah, every day was a challenge for sure.”
