Movies 2017: How to holiday at the best filming locations from the year’s biggest releases

Here’s some travel inspiration from the prettiest places on the big screen in 2017

The highly anticipated 'Ghost in the Shell' is set in Hong Kong (Dreamworks)

The number of movie sequels has doubled in the last 10 years. Next year, risk-averse studio heads present: a second crack of the whip for the Fifty Shades franchise, a tune up Cars 3 and the dusty carcass of The Mummy, excavated for a fourth time.

The plots may be plodding, but – spurred by tasty tax breaks – there is one area where filmmakers are remarkably broad-minded: travel. Follow in their footsteps by checking out the locations of these 2017 sequels, remakes and reboots. They’re set in places bigger, brighter and more beautiful than the average film exec’s imagination.

Kong: Skull Island

The latest reboot of the classic monster movie was filmed on Hawaii, last plagued by a hairy, bellowing lothario when Russell Brand shot Forgetting Sarah Marshall there a decade ago. Now you can ape stars Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson by swinging by the Kualoa Ranch, the 4,000-acre nature reserve that their Kong called home.

Do it: Take the Taste of Kualoa food tour: two-and-a-half hours of marching and munching in which you’ll pick fruit, rope cattle and learn to net fish like an ancient Hawaiian. The film’s blurb promises a setting “as beautiful as it is treacherous”. Your biggest threat here? Indigestion.

See it: 10 March 2017

Ghost in the Shell

Set in a future city based on Hong Kong, this live action remake of Mamoru Oshii’s beloved anime, which stars Scarlett Johansson as a cyborg cop, was shot largely in Wellington, New Zealand. Scar-Jo described her time there as “quiet”. BORING! Head instead to the teeming neon majesty that inspired Oshii’s original.

Do it: From the Wong Tai Sin Temple to the “Jumbo Kingdom” restaurant (a floating behemoth that can seat 2,300), Hong Kong is rammed full of things to do. Head to Nathan Road to find Chungking Mansions – a maze-like shopping centre whose trades get more illicit the deeper you go – for something like the future.

See it: 31 March 2017

Head to Hawaii for the setting of ‘Kong: Skull Island’

Baywatch

Sun, sand, slow motion. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Zac “The Jock” Efron strip off and dumb down for a jokey spin on the Nineties TV show. Shot largely on Deerfield Beach in Florida, a sun spot packed with enough buff dudes to leave even rippling Zac feeling a tad insecure.

Do it: Had it with abs? Flex your mental muscle at nearby Delray Beach’s Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens, a shrine to the work of the Japanese farmers of the Yamato Colony, who helped add the pineapple to fruit bowls across the Orange State.

See it: May 26 2017

The Fate of the Furious

Everything from the title down screams subtlety. The Fast & Furious franchise’s eighth outing sees the petrolheads plough through Akranes, Iceland, where – not content with scaring a horse to death (apparently the animal was so frightened by a styrofoam replica of an iceberg that it galloped off and severely broke its leg) – the filmmakers also set off the country’s “largest explosion ever”.

Do it: Head to the newly-opened Akranes lighthouse, where on a clear day (ie, not when somebody’s setting off the country’s “largest explosion ever”) you can see across the bay to Reykjavik.

See it: April 14 2017

Ewan McGregor and Jonny Lee Miller return as Renton and Sick Boy

T2 Trainspotting

Hawaii, Hong Kong, Florida … Clydebank. Danny Boyle – returning 21 years after the film that made his name – repeats the trick of shooting in and around Glasgow as a substitute for Edinburgh. Follow Renton, Sickboy, Begbie and the gang as they grow old disreputably.

Do it: “See the pub where Begbie throws a glass and causes havoc”, says the puff for the Trainspotting Tour of Filming Locations. Just leave before the loo break.

See it: January 27 2017