<Tr> <Th> Box office </Th> <Td> $3.7 million (rentals, initial US release) or $6,859,000 </Td> </Tr> <P> Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz based on Murray Burnett and Joan Alison's unproduced stage play Everybody Comes to Rick's . The film stars Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid; it also features Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Dooley Wilson . Set during contemporary World War II, it focuses on an American expatriate who must choose between his love for a woman and helping her and her husband, a Czech Resistance leader, escape from the Vichy - controlled city of Casablanca to continue his fight against the Nazis . </P> <P> Warner Bros. story editor Irene Diamond convinced producer Hal B. Wallis to purchase the film rights to the play in January 1942 . Brothers Julius and Philip G. Epstein were initially assigned to write the script . However, despite studio resistance, they left to work on Frank Capra's Why We Fight series early in 1942 . Howard Koch was assigned to the screenplay until the Epsteins returned a month later . Principal photography began on May 25, 1942, ending on August 3; the film was shot entirely at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California with the exception of one sequence at Van Nuys Airport in Van Nuys, Los Angeles . </P> <P> Although Casablanca was an A-list film with established stars and first - rate writers, no one involved with its production expected it to be anything other than one of the hundreds of ordinary pictures produced by Hollywood that year . Casablanca was rushed into release to take advantage of the publicity from the Allied invasion of North Africa a few weeks earlier . It had its world premiere on November 26, 1942, in New York City and was released nationally in the United States on January 23, 1943 . The film was a solid if unspectacular success in its initial run . </P>

Where was the airport scene in casablanca filmed