The decayed Los Angeles hotel that inspired the Hotel Artemis

(Warner Bros)

The titular building in Hotel Artemis is grand but grimy, a once resplendent Los Angeles structure fallen into disrepair and now serving as a safe house and hospital for deadly criminals.

For the film's production designer Ramsey Avery, it was inspired by a real-life LA hotel with a similarly checkered history - the Hotel Alexandria.

“It was the fanciest hotel in Los Angeles when it opened in 1906,” Avery said. “Downtown was the place to be back then.”

It remained the height of luxury for many years, but as the city's business district drifted further from it and even more opulent hotels like the Biltmore sprang up around it, sales dwindled and in 1934 its gold leaf ceilings, furniture, chandeliers and other fittings were sold to pay off debts.

(Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection)

By the 1970s it had become housing for low-income residents, before ceasing to attract overnight guests due to its proximity to LA's Skid Row. Its Ozymandian descent was complete, the former starlet hangout now synonymous with drug crime and a general air of threat. It even wound up on city haunted house lists.

In fact, the real-life Alexandria declined more than the fictional Artemis ever did.

“Our hotel was never a flophouse,” Avery explains. “Many of its beautiful details, such as murals and lighting fixtures, remain intact.”

Hotel Artemis may be the first film to be directly inspired by the Alexandria, but it has a long cinematic history, having served as a filming location for Dreamgirls, Water for Elephants, Spider-Man 3 and, most famously, Se7en, it being where the killer John Doe resided in David Fincher's gritty crime thriller.

In the early 2000s, there was an upturn in investment in downtown LA and the Alexandria was slowly remodelled and its ballrooms are now even used for weddings.

This is where the similarities with the 2020s-set Hotel Artemis clearly diverge, the Artemis' rebirth under the battle-hardened owner The Nurse (Jodie Foster) seeing suites opened up to contract killers and anterooms turned into futuristic operating theatres.

Hotel Artemis is in cinemas now.