2026
Michael Russell Gunn shot The Brink of War (2026), a Cold War drama about the 1986 Reykjavík Summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, in Iceland at Reykjavík's Höfði House in 2024. Jeff Daniels plays Reagan and Jared Harris plays Gorbachev, with J.K. Simmons as US Secretary of State George Shultz, Hope Davis as Nancy Reagan and Branka Katic as Raisa Gorbacheva.
Rather than build a replica on a soundstage, the production filmed inside the actual 1909 timber house where the summit took place. The Icelandic government granted special access to Höfði, which is kept today as a diplomatic reception space. The production treated it as a living museum and worked within the limits of a house that cannot take nails in its 19th-century walls.
Speaking to The Location Guide in 2026, producer John Logan Pierson put the choice simply: "We needed to be there to make it as authentic as possible, and if it had been built on a stage, something would have been lost in emotion, energy and production value."
Höfði House, Reykjavík. The small white seaside house where Reagan and Gorbachev met over a weekend in 1986. Eighteen of the production's twenty main-unit shooting days took place here. The art department built temporary sets inside the house ('walls within walls') to double rooms as the White House, as CIA and KGB offices, and (in the basement) as the interior of the Soviet ship on which Gorbachev stayed during the summit. The actors sat in the original chairs Reagan and Gorbachev used, in front of the original paintings that hung on the walls in 1986, on loan from local museums for the shoot.
The Blue Lagoon, Reykjanes peninsula. Used for the sequences following Raisa Gorbacheva's visit to Iceland during the summit weekend.
Second-unit landscape across Iceland. More than thirty days of aerial, landscape and atmospheric photography across volcanic plains, glacial coastline and northern-light skies, cut into the film as interstitial material framing the summit's existential stakes.
The decision to shoot at Höfði changed how the actors prepared. Jeff Daniels arrived for camera tests in full Reagan costume, walked from the front door to the window and looked out at the view Reagan would have had, before anyone could speak. In an interview with Icelandair's Arora magazine, he described Höfði as 'a shrine to peace,' adding that 'the entire country is proud of having that location.' The production also brought back Pete Souza, who had covered the real 1986 summit as White House photographer, to shoot stills on set.
For the Icelandic crew, the subject matter carried personal weight. For the generation that remembers 1986, hosting the superpower talks that eased the nuclear threat is a point of national pride that still runs through the country. The production was serviced by an Icelandic production company and worked with a majority-Icelandic crew throughout the Höfði shoot.
For specific enquiries, contact the Iceland Film Commission.
