Development and Filming
How the miniseries was researched, financed and filmed.
Last updated
Chernobyl was developed by the writer Craig Mazin, who began researching the project in 2014, and was ordered as a series by HBO and Sky on July 26, 2017. It was the first co-production between HBO and Sky UK. The five episodes were directed by Johan Renck and filmed over 16 weeks, mostly in Lithuania.
Last updated 2026-09-29 from the source article.
Lore & Background
Mazin read books and government reports from inside and outside the Soviet Union, interviewed nuclear scientists and former Soviet citizens, and read first-person accounts. He also visited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Early on he decided that the actors would use their natural accents and not Russian or Ukrainian ones, and he did not cast any American actors.
Carolyn Strauss joined as producer in early 2017 and pitched the show with Mazin to HBO. Sky UK was brought in to co-produce, which reduced the share of HBO to around $15 million of a $40 million budget. Expectations for viewership stayed low during development, and the series was given a Monday night slot.
Reader's Guide
Principal photography began in Lithuania in April 2018. The district of Fabijoniškės in Vilnius stood in for Pripyat because it had kept a Soviet atmosphere, and an area of panel housing there was used for the evacuation scenes. The interior and exterior of the power plant were shot at the decommissioned Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, which uses the same reactor design. Production moved to Ukraine in early June 2018 for minor final scenes.
The cinematographer has said that Soviet-era films, among them Stalker and Come and See, inspired the look of the series. A companion podcast accompanied each episode, discussing where the show kept to events and where it used artistic license. On June 4, 2019, Mazin made the original scripts available for download.
Elsewhere in Chernobyl: The HBO Miniseries
Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Chernobyl (miniseries) (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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