Hollywood location shooting in Canada soared last year, encouraged by a low Canadian dollar and generous film tax breaks, local indie producers reported on Wednesday.
The 27.3 percent year-on-year jump to CAN $6.71 billion (US$4.94 billion) for total foreign film and TV production activity north of the border came as American TV series like The Handmaid’s Tale, The Flash and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds shot locally, according to a report from the Canadian Media Production Association.
The number of foreign, mostly Hollywood, feature films that shot in Canada jumped from 141 in 2021 to 171 pictures last year, with total budget expenditures rising from CAN$1.38 billion to CAN$1.66 billion (US$1.2 billion) in 2022. That 20 percent jump in the volume of foreign film production offset a 4.1 percent fall in the total volume of foreign TV series production in Canada in 2022.
The number of mostly U.S. TV shows that shot locally last year fell slightly from 277 to 258, with overall budget spending for the series going from CAN$3.44 billion to CAN$3.3 billion (US$2.43 billion).
Notwithstanding the brakes pulled on American production in Canada at the start of the COVID-19 crisis and currently with the U.S. writers strike south of the border, the Canadian film and TV production sector continues to draw Hollywood north on the strength of the low Canadian dollar, compared to the American greenback, and generous tax breaks that allow Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal to compete with rival locales like Louisiana and Georgia.
In recent years, U.S. streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu have sent more content to be shot in Canada, with Vancouver taking advantage of its proximity to Los Angeles and Toronto and Montreal taking their share of foreign film and TV projects that originate from major European co-production partners in the U.K., France and Germany.
