Decades ago, Portman never envisioned his buildings as dystopian fortresses or imagined Hollywood actors rappelling down his skyscrapers. In 2008, tax incentives sped Atlanta's ascension as a film-production hub and alternative to Los Angeles. Thanks to hits such as Anchorman 2, The Internship, Selma, and TV's The Walking Dead, the industry generated $5.1 billion for Georgia's economy in 2014. Yet, movie producers stalked Portman buildings years before Insurgent's stuntmen zip-lined over AmericasMart, and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay relocated elements of Panem's Capitol to the massive atrium of the Atlanta Marriott Marquis.

Clean lines and neo-futuristic forms made Portman's architecture from the 1970s and 1980s camera-ready. Burt Reynolds was one of the first to film at Atlanta's Westin Peachtree Plaza in 1981 and while on location there, he also recorded a 220-foot freefall stunt at the neighboring Hyatt Regency, using both hotels for the noir action movie Sharky’s Machine. After that film, other directors began to imagine Portman's concrete obelisks and curved walls as they might appear in the distant future. Detroit's Portman-designed Renaissance Center provided inspiration for the fictitious Delta City in Paul Verhoeven'sRobocop and appeared in other films including Out of Sight, Presumed Innocent, and Grosse Point Blank. The Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles, a classic multi-cylindrical Portman hotel, can be spotted in dozens of sci-fi action thrillers including John Carpenter's Escape From LA as well as Strange Days, Mission Impossible III, and Interstellar.

"[Directors are] projecting a future by imagining how it would look in ruins," said Michael Hays, a professor of architectural theory at Harvard. "All the flesh has been removed and you just see the architectural bones. I've always thought Portman's buildings would make very beautiful ruins, because the essence of them is so powerful and so direct."

Portman's use of scale expands spatial perceptions from the human level to the colossal. In multistory buildings, elevators are the primary mode of transport from the lobby through a vast atrium; most of Portman's elevators are made of glass. Both Clint Eastwood's In the Line of Fire (1993) and James Cameron'sTrue Lies (1994) utilized the elevators in Portman's Westin Bonaventure to convey the importance of scale and take viewers along for the ride.