Toronto’s Filmport has yet to land a major tenant for its seven spanking-new soundstages, but it is renting out office and wardrobe space to legendary zombie master George A. Romero.

Ken Ferguson, president of Toronto Film Studios, soon to be rebranded as Filmport Studios, says Romero’s Diary of the Dead 2 has been using his lot as a base since Monday as it shoots on location in Toronto.

The project, purposely shooting under the radar without media hype, is a sequel to the early 2008 horror picture from the director’s production shingle Romero-Grunwald Productions and Artfire Films.

The first Diary of the Dead was also shot in Toronto and bowed at the Toronto International Film Festival as part of its Midnight Madness program, where Dimension Films picked up its North American rights.

The office space rental comes ahead of an official launch for Filmport on Aug. 20, to be attended by Toronto Mayor David Miller and industry luminaries.

Ferguson says the current studio-Screen Actors Guild negotiations in Los Angeles have hampered efforts to land a studio shoot for Filmport’s soundstages in time for the studio complex’s ribbon-cutting.

Romero’s indie location shoot is not the effects-heavy, expensive studio shoot originally envisioned for Filmport. But Ferguson says it’s time to swing the doors at the megastudio open.

‘We’re ready to have our opening. Let’s have everyone over here. They can see that people are here producing films,’ he says.