With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1505828
ON THE RADAR ( the informer ) N ear the corner of Main and Alexander in Vancouver on a sunny day in late May, catering tents mark the site of filming for A Nice Indian Boy, a rom-com fea- turing Deadpool's Karan Soni and Mindhunter star Jonathan Groff. Several grips are taking a coffee break and talking about the business. "If you want to know how good a show is," one of them tells me, "count the number of grips." Lately the province's film industry has been coming to grips with some serious issues. Most prominent is the Writers Guild of America ( WGA) strike in the U.S., a development that strangled production across North America starting in the spring. Although the Writers Guild of Canada did not strike, most of the major productions in B.C. are based on American scripts. According to Creative BC, there were 27 movies or series and one documentary shooting in B.C. as of the end of June. That's roughly half the recent average. And that was before the Screen Actor's Guild strike in mid-July brought the hammer down on almost all productions involving Ameri- can actors. But the strikes are only the latest blow in what has been a tumultuous period for film in Reel Problems As of press time, the Hollywood writers' and actors' strikes were still very much active, but the list of issues the B.C. film industry faces does not stop there By Steve Burgess F I L M SHOOTING STARS Some productions that filmed (or had planned to film) in B.C. during summer 2023: CAN I GET A WITNESS? Location: Powell River Vancouver writer-director Ann Marie Fleming helms a sci fi tale starring Sandra Oh in which the survival of all species hinges on humans agreeing to die at 50. TRON: ARES Location: Vancouver The third installment of the Tron series will take the very controversial step of casting Jared Leto. Leto's last blockbuster film, Morbius, bombed. Here he will be supported by Greta Lee (hot off the Oscar-buzzy Past Lives), Evan Peters and Jodie Turner- Smith. 2010's Tron: Legacy (pictured) was shot in a few different B.C. locales, like Surrey's Crescent Beach. NEVER LET GO (formerly Mother Land) Location: Burnaby Halle Berry stars in this thriller from Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes) about a family that has been haunted in the woods by an evil spirit for years. We think Burnaby Lake Regional Park will play the haunted woods part quite nicely. TOP: ADAM BLASBERG; RIGHT: DISNEY/MAXIMUM FILM/ALAMY KILL SHOT Dennis Heaton of Vancouver's Planet X Pictures says the recent strikes are just the latest industry setback SEPTEMBER 2023 BCBUSINESS.CA 13 this province. Not long ago, the local industry was enjoying a near-unprecedented boom that strained the capacity of B.C. crews and production facilities. Before U.S. writers voted to strike on May 1, that boom had already gone bust. Dennis Heaton of Vancou- ver-based Planet X Pictures, the company behind Netflix shows The Imperfects and The Order, among other produc- tions, says the writers' strike resulted from a changing land- scape in movie and TV produc- tion. "I would say the big issue is streamers and residuals," Heaton says. "And the fact that writers aren't making what they should be making." Syndicated TV shows pay residuals when episodes are rebroadcast, but that formula doesn't apply to Netflix-style streaming shows, which are generally made available all at once. The WGA also complains that streaming services have driven pay rates down to mini- mal levels.