It was filmed in and around Charleston. The Hamiltons' summer house is Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant, and the house Noah restores stands on Martins Point on Wadmalaw Island. The movie theater the characters go to in the 1940s is real: the American Theater on King Street, an Art Deco building by the Greek architect Augustus Constantine, one of the few of his buildings still standing in the city.
The boat among the swans is Cypress Gardens in Moncks Corner, a cypress swamp. It started out differently: in 1998 Spielberg wanted to adapt the novel, with Tom Cruise in the lead.
