This story was originally published in 2023.
Ever since the old Jazzland/Six Flags New Orleans amusement park closed ahead of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, the city has tried again and again — and failed again and again — to jump-start redevelopment of the land on which it sits.
But to say the 227-acre site has been sitting idle isn’t quite accurate. There's a new plan in the works to re-develop the property in New Orleans East and tear down the structures left behind. You can see 2024 photos from inside the old Six Flags gates here.
And over the past 17 years, it has served as a de facto backlot for a wealth of film productions — and that’s not even counting music videos like Rapper NF’s “Leave Me Alone” or video games like “Mafia III.”
While it doesn’t quite compare to one more spin on the Mega Zeph or a plunge down the Ozarka Splash log flume, here are 10 memorable productions to film at the old park, ranked in order of how much screen time the old park gets.
10. “Jurassic World” (2015). This fourth installment in the blockbuster franchise is notable for being the one in which the fictional dino-park finally opens. While it filmed at the Jazzland site, it doesn’t actually feature any of the decrepit park. Instead crews constructed — and then deconstructed — a shiny new park set in the Jazzland parking lot, where they also built the film’s raptor enclosures.
Malcom (Jason Clarke, right) tries to make peace with Caesar (Andy Serkis), Koba (Toby Kebbell) and Maurice (Karin Konoval) in the New Orleans-shot sequel 'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.' Rubble-strewn scenes of ape habitat were created and filmed on the Jazzland parking lot. (WETA / Twentieth Century Fox)
9. “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” (2014). This is another film that was in it just for the wide open space of the parking lot, on which crews built the rock-strewn “apes village” in which rabble-rousing chimp Caesar lived with his banana-loving army.
8. “Deepwater Horizon” (2016). Yet another parking lot squatter (last one on the list, I promise), although this one is ranked higher than the others sheerly for the insane ambition of the set, which included a 70-foot oil rig — with functioning helipad — and a 2 million-gallon water tank.
7. “Killer Joe” (2011). Finally, we get inside the park thanks to William Friedkin’s pitch-black comedy, set in Texas but filmed largely in New Orleans. That includes a scene in which Emile Hirsch meets a behatted Matthew McConaughey in the shadow of the Mega Zeph roller coaster to discuss a murder-for-hire.
6. “Project Power” (2020) and “Synchronic” (2020). I’m just going to lump these two together, given that they share so many suspicious similarities, from the main plot point — involving a street drug that has an unexpected effect on those who take it — to the fact that both feature brief scenes shot at Jazzland. (Besides, if I listed them separately, this would be a “Top 11” list, which would just be weird.)
5. “Reminiscence” (2021). Almost exactly halfway through this near-future, neo-noir thriller, Hugh Jackman sets out to visit a “floating market at the park.” That park is a derelict Jazzland, and the scene offers glimpses of the old Midway and such rides as the Big Easy Ferris Wheel and Zydeco Zinger.
Nicolas Cage runs through the old Six Flags New Orleans amusement park -- doubling as a French Quarter street -- in director Simon West's New Orleans-shot crime thriller 'Stolen.'
4. “Stolen” (2013). This Nicolas Cage ripoff of “Taken” isn’t a very good movie, but it makes good use of the old park. In addition to using its Main Street to double for the French Quarter, the film’s bad-guy lair is the park’s Orpheum Theater. Even better, the big third-act showdown is shot all over the park, including in — that’s right, in — its central lagoon.
3. “Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters” (2013). Producers of this adaptation of the Rick Riordan novel fell so in love with Jazzland they rewrote the story to include an abandoned amusement park, where members of its kid cast hunt for the Golden Fleece. In the process, we get great looks at the old rides, including in a key scene set in an area enclosed by the Mega Zeph roller coaster.
Carmina Garay, left, and Chloe Guidry stroll down the midway of the Pontchartrain Beach section of the old Jazzland/Six Flags New Orleans site, in an image from the dystopian thriller ‘The Park.’
2. “The Park” (2023). The most recent addition to this list is an indie dystopian thriller set and shot almost entirely in the park, providing some of the most extended looks at its advanced state of atmospheric decrepitude we’ve gotten so far.
1. “Closed for Storm” (2020). Coming in at No. 1 is this highly recommendable documentary that uses archival footage, home movies and interviews with former park employees to tell the Jazzland story from its inception to its demise. In addition to letting viewers bask in a deep well of nostalgia, it stands as the definitive history of Jazzland/Six Flags.
