Lights, Camera, Action: Hollywood North coming to a screen near you

Movies in Vancouver.

As the fourth-largest centre for film and TV production in North America, Vancouver – also known as “Hollywood North” – continues to be a hotspot of filming activity. Chalk it up to low production costs, a climate conducive to all-year shooting and one heck of a good-looking city – whatever the case, Vancouver is a hit with TV and movie producers and, by extension, movie stars.
Animation and digital film production thrive here, too. Life of Pi, District 9, Sherlock Holmes andCloud Atlas are among the major blockbusters whose digital effects were completed in Vancouver, and the worldwide phenomenon Angry Birds is flocking to the city for development as it makes its way to the big screen in 2016. We’ve also got plenty of small screen productions on the go, including Arrow,Continuum, Once Upon a Time, Supernatural and more. Naturally, the city is a fertile sandbox for actors and writers: Michael J. Fox, Ryan Reynolds and Joshua Jackson all grew up in Vancouver, as did writing partners Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen, who wrote the film Superbad about their experiences here as teens.

Recent feature films shot in Vancouver include:

•    RoboCop.  Starring Joel Kinnaman, Gary Oldman, Michael Keaton and Samuel L. Jackson.
•    Tomorrowland. Starring George Clooney, Hugh Laurie and Britt Robertson.
•    Fifty Shades of Grey. Starring Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson.
•    The Grey. Starring Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo and Dermot Mulroney.
•    The Twilight Saga. Starring Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner.

Photo and article courtesy of Tourism Vancouver’s travel media newsletter for April 2014.