Helen Mirren in HBO’s Catherine the Great miniseries, which filmed in Lithuania.

The global explosion in production has been good to Central and Eastern Europe.

As TV channels and studios ramp up the volume of series they churn out to meet the hungry demands of new online services, and productions in booming international markets, particularly China and India, look abroad to find new locations to shoot their local-language blockbusters, the countries on Europe’s eastern edge are perfectly placed to take advantage.

The nations packed in from the Baltic in the north to the Adriatic in the south and from the Czech and Polish borders with Germany to the western edge of Russia offer a combination of low wage costs and locations that can stand in for Europe old (castles, medieval towns, grand country estates), new (high-tech city centers) and Soviet (brutalist concrete architecture). Add to that a highly trained local workforce, which draws on strong cinematic traditions and a newly vibrant local production scene, and it’s obvious why international productions including Justin Lin’s Fast & Furious 9, HBO’s Emmy-winning Chernobyl, Samuel L. Jackson and Maggie Q starrer The Asset and the bad-taste bonanza that will be David Sandberg’s action spoof Kung Fury 2 picked the region for their shoots.

Hungary and the Czech Republic are still the top spots for visiting productions, but smaller territories — Serbia, Georgia, Lithuania and Romania among them — are catching up, offering tasty tax incentives to lure away producers.

Here’s everything international producers and location scouts need to know about shooting in one of the world’s busiest locations sectors.