The cameras are set to finally start whirling on soundstages at Filmport Studios.

‘I’m looking at a full parking lot. That’s good news,’ said president Ken Ferguson earlier this week, as Filmport welcomed Atom Egoyan’s Chloe, starring Julianne Moore and Liam Neeson.

Egoyan’s latest movie, produced by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Picture Company, is a low-budget indie project unaffected by the ongoing brinkmanship between SAG and the AMPTP that thwarted earlier efforts to fill the Toronto megastudio after it opened last August.

Also set to shoot on two stages at Filmport starting in February is Warehouse 13, the NBC/Universal TV series which shot its pilot in Toronto before it received a first-season order. The Warehouse 13 shoot is also not dependent on SAG as it falls under a separate AFTRA contract.

The other big get for Filmport is Universal Pictures’ Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which is based on the graphic novels by Canada’s Bryan Lee O’Malley and set in Toronto.

The Scott Pilgrim producers initially bypassed Filmport for less-expensive digs at the nearby Cinespace complex. The Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead-starrer then returned to Filmport to secure spillover soundstages for when production at Cinespace gets underway this spring.

Another possibility is David Cronenberg’s The Matarese Circle, an MGM picture that the Toronto director is bidding to bring to his hometown. Cronenberg told the media in August that he looked forward to, at long last, shooting on a Filmport stage.

Ferguson said Filmport, like other local service providers, has had to drop its rates to win business from Los Angeles producers with tightened budgets in hard times.

‘Everyone will be very competitive and be as helpful on their rates, and that includes Filmport,’ he said.

Mayor David Miller, in L.A. this week to pitch Toronto to major studio executives, told Playback Daily he welcomed being able to point to bookings at Filmport on his rounds.

‘[Filmport is] the best facility of its type, period. That’s the other part of the story. We were missing one thing. We have everything else,’ Miller said of the studio, which includes North America’s largest soundstage at 46,500 square feet.