The Love Hypothesis was filmed in Montreal, Quebec, and at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. The story takes place at Stanford, but the production combined Canadian locations with Caltech’s campus to build Olive and Adam’s academic world.
Caltech has confirmed the movie filmed around Kerckhoff, Bechtel Mall and Caltech Hall Pond. The result is a screen campus that feels geographically consistent even though the actors and crew worked in more than one city.
- Story setting: Stanford University
- Main production area: Montreal, Quebec
- California campus: Caltech, Pasadena
- Production period: Summer and fall 2025
- Streaming on: Prime Video
Montreal hosted the main production
ACTRA Montreal’s production listing records the feature filming from July 14 through August 29, 2025. Tom Bateman has also described meeting Lili Reinhart in Montreal before shooting, where the pair worked through scenes with director Claire Scanlon.
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Montreal provides a flexible production base for the interiors and university environment. The city can supply institutional buildings and streets without requiring every scene to be filmed at the California university named in the story.
Caltech stands in for Stanford
Caltech’s own campus paper documented a large production working there during the fall 2025 term. It identified Kerckhoff, Bechtel Mall and the area around Caltech Hall Pond as filming locations. The school effectively played Stanford for about a week.
That choice gives the film genuine Southern California academic exteriors. Caltech’s communications staff explained that productions often look for a campus with the right architectural character while avoiding the expense and disruption of moving an entire unit to the exact institution in a script.
The movie creates one campus from two places
The production approach also helps separate the story’s public and private spaces. A broad California quad can sell the prestige of Stanford, while controlled Montreal interiors allow the camera to stay close to Olive in labs, apartments and faculty rooms. Viewers experience one institution even when geography changes between cuts.
The split is useful for a romance built around laboratories, faculty events and outdoor meetings. Montreal could carry much of the schedule, while Caltech supplied recognizable sunlit campus spaces. Editing and production design make those pieces read as Olive’s Stanford.
Caltech’s documented participation is especially useful because it removes the need to guess which campus appears in those exterior scenes. Montreal’s union listing likewise establishes where the longer production block took place, even when individual buildings are not publicly identified.
The real Stanford University is central to the fictional setting, but the verified production record points to Montreal and Caltech rather than a Stanford shoot. The next time Olive crosses campus, viewers are likely seeing Pasadena or Montreal behind her. Which location would you most like to visit? Share your pick in the comments.
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