Winnipeg is gearing up for what is being heralded as its biggest production ever, when Miramax brings the musical feature Shall We Dance? to town June 23 for a 10-week shoot.

Based on the 1996 film Shall We Dansu?, the most successful ever Japanese-language import on U.S. screens, the Hollywood remake stars two of the hottest stars on the planet – Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. No strangers to our home and native land, Gere gave a Golden Globe-worthy performance in Toronto-shot musical Chicago, while Lopez will be coming off the B.C. set of An Unfinished Life, in which she acts opposite Robert Redford. Shall We Dance? will be helmed by Peter Chelsom, who shot the romantic comedy Serendipity in Toronto in 2000.

The film has Gere playing a bored accountant who becomes fascinated with a dance instructor he sees through a window, which inspires him to sign up for lessons.

The project was scheduled to shoot in T.O. but pulled out due to the SARS scare. Of course, Hogtown’s loss is the ‘Peg’s gain, and summer ’03 stands to be busy and lucrative for Prairie service providers.

‘The film industry continues to add excitement and inject a big economic boost to this community,’ says Winnipeg Mayor Glen Murray. ‘The whole city benefits when we have films like this and celebrities like Jennifer Lopez and Richard Gere. Ours is a film-friendly city and we make every possible arrangement to welcome crews, secure locations and help with filmmaking logistics.’

The economic boost from this one production is far-reaching and means a lot to many local businesses.

‘To do a production in that multimillion-dollar range and to deal with this level of stardom will be a new experience for this company,’ says Calgary’s Dave Porter, owner of Maverik Catering, which, at press time, was in negotiations for the production’s catering contract.

The city’s Budget Rent A Car has already locked the transportation side of the project, and local sales manager Jeff Patterson says Budget plans on renting about 80 vehicles to the production, from compacts to five-ton trucks. Patterson says it’s the firm’s biggest order ever.

The film’s arrival is a mixed blessing to some, however.

Local prodco and F/X shop Frantic Films is a likely candidate to get a call from Shall We Dance? producers for some of their F/X needs, as Frantic has blockbusters The Core, X2 and The Italian Job on its reel. Frantic CEO and executive producer Jamie Brown says, naturally, he’d be tickled to get that call, and he’s happy for the city’s service sector. By the same token, the production will make it difficult for Frantic to crew up its forthcoming MOW copro Zaida & the Hitman. After all, how can a Canuck movie compete with the kind of money Miramax can throw around?

‘We are meeting with keys here right now and hoping to be able to lock people in soon,’ says Brown. ‘But it’ll be a bit of a race to finish. I think we’ll be scrambling to pull the best people, as other productions will be as well.’