SAN DIEGO — Last year, as Comic-Con unfolded over several days inside the San Diego Convention Center, Leonardo DiCaprio and a crew from Warner Bros. were sneaking around East Village and the Gaslamp Quarter in the middle of the night filming “One Battle After Another.”

Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest movie, which debuted Friday, filmed all over San Diego County, bringing together hundreds of cast and crew over several months. The two-hour, 50-minute action-comedy-thriller, which also stars Benicio Del Toro, Chase Infiniti, Teyana Taylor, Regina Hall and Sean Penn, is about a “washed-up revolutionary” who “exists in a state of stoned paranoia, surviving off-grid with his spirited, self-reliant daughter, Willa,” according to the studio.

While it focuses on a fictional revolutionary group called French 75, viewers will recognize real-life themes and issues, starting with an opening scene where the words “Otay Mesa Immigration Detention Center” are shown on the screen over a view of migrants sitting on space blankets in a fenced-in area. The creators really filmed this in Otay Mesa, and built a major set there for about three weeks to depict a scene where the French 75 help the detained migrants escape.

Viewers will have to pay close attention to catch the local scenes, which are interspersed with footage from other locations such as Sacramento, Eureka and El Paso, Texas. But some parts are unmistakable.

San Diego’s Filming Program Manager Guy Langman said discussion about filming here began about two years ago. Then it was in March 2024, for about a week, when cast and crew started local filming at The Westgate Hotel. The scene there, which center on Penn’s character Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, is essential to the plot of the film.

“The Warner Bros. team was fantastic — they brought so much energy to both The Westgate and AquaVie,” VP of Operations and General Manager Annie Fitzgerald said in an email. “It was exciting for our staff to see such a large production happening right in front of us. We always keep guest privacy top of mind, but since some scenes were shot during the day, a few of our team members did get to catch Sean Penn in action, which was a real thrill for them.”

Fitzgerald confirmed that the hotel’s grand staircase, governor’s suite, garage, lower-level lobby and some back-of-house areas were used for filming.

“Everyone was really excited,” Fitzgerald said. “A few of our team members were even asked to be extras, so we’ll all be watching closely to see if we can spot anyone we know on screen.”

Next, about one month before Comic-Con last year, city and county officials confirmed a plan to film next to the California Highway Patrol Commercial Vehicle Enforcement Facility along Via del la Amistad in Otay Mesa. They also filmed on county roads — car chase scenes are a major highlight of “One Battle After Another” — using the Lower Otay Reservoir as a base camp.

While the movie easily races from one scene to another at a break-neck pace, behind the scenes, the local production work was a massive undertaking, bringing together public officials from multiple city, county and federal agencies.

“We can do anything L.A. can do, locations-wise,” Langman said. “We are very, very film-friendly. You don’t always hear about the big productions coming in here, but we’re doing national commercials weekly and we have a very streamlined, easy system here.”

The filming locations confirmed by the city of San Diego are: The Westgate Hotel, East Village, Otay Mesa, Borrego Springs, Lower Otay Reservoir, Otay Open Space Preserve, Agua Caliente and Imperial Beach.

Langman said Warner Bros. spent $3.4 million in local production costs, buying gasoline, supplies from grocery and hardware stores and staying in hotels and motels across the South Bay.

And though much of this took place without public knowledge, the experience left a memorable mark on Stout Public House on the north end of the Gaslamp Quarter. One night, also during Comic-Con, Robert Tunstall, a local actor who sometimes fills in to help at the pub, was asked to open it up from about 1 to 6 a.m. for cast and crew to film inside and outside.

Tunstall’s cellphone marks the date as July 25, when DiCaprio, Taylor, Thomas Anderson and others showed up to work through a long night of filming. Tunstall recalls hanging out across the street, staying out of the actors’ way, until the end of the night as the crew was wrapping up.

According to him, DiCaprio ended the long night by asking him for a drink, and Tunstall obliged with Hibiki Suntory Whisky. Then Thomas Anderson, who also wrote and produced the film, joined in. Thanking him for the hospitality, DiCaprio handed him a $100 bill.

Langman said he got to join the crew as they also drove around downtown looking for places to set up a pay phone to shoot some important dialogue in the movie.

“They’d have a couple of these pay phones in the back of the truck and the director would find a location that just popped, like — ‘I love this location.’ At two in the morning,” Langman said. “This is a director that lives in the moment. And just like when they were on the county roads, he would see things… when they were downtown in East Village — ‘I love this intersection, I love how this building looks with this lighting, let’s stop right here.’ And that’s what we were doing in the middle of Comic-Con.”

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