B.C. is on track to see 2009 foreign production volume ring in at a similar level as 2008, when 86 offshore projects totaling $1.4 billion in budgets shot in the province.

‘Right now we are on par with last year,’ says Crawford Hawkins, executive director of the Directors Guild of Canada – B.C. District Council.

Among the major features landing in B.C. this summer is Universal’s The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud, starring young heartthrob Zac Efron (High School Musical).

Directed by Burr Steers (17 Again), St. Cloud is adapted from the Ben Sherwood novel about a young man overcome by grief at the death of his younger brother – so much so that he takes a job as caretaker at the cemetery where his brother is buried. Shooting begins in August and runs through to October.

Warner Bros.’s Sucker Punch shoots September through to January 2010, helmed by Zack Snyder (Watchmen). The all-girl action movie is set in the 1950s and centers on a young woman who is institutionalized by her stepfather and retreats into a fantasy world where she envisions an escape plan. Cast reportedly includes Vanessa Hudgens (High School Musical), Abbie Cornish (A Good Year), Emily Browning (The Uninvited) and Jena Malone (Pride & Prejudice).

Fox has several movies shooting in B.C. this summer, including the live-action/animated adaptation of the Marmaduke comic strip, directed by Tom Dey (Shanghai Noon); a feature remake of the 1980s TV series The A-Team, starring Bradley Cooper (The Hangover) and Liam Neeson (Chronicles of Narnia), directed by Joe Carnahan; and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, based on Jeff Kinney’s tween novel about an awkward, wise-cracking middle school student, directed by Thor Freudenthal (Hotel for Dogs).

‘The studios are still putting money into big tentpole movies, which serves us quite well because the B.C. industry excels at making these type of films,’ says B.C. film commissioner Susan Croome. ‘Disney hadn’t shot in B.C. in awhile, and now they are doing Tron 2 here [which wrapped July 10] and seem very interested in B.C. again.’

And while Summit Entertainment’s Twilight sequel New Moon has wrapped production, the next installment in Stephenie Meyer’s vampire book series, Eclipse, is scheduled to shoot in B.C. in late summer.

The industry has breathed a collective sigh of relief now that the Screen Actors Guild has ratified a new agreement. Hawkins says U.S. producers had indicated that they were holding back some features pending the resolution of the labor issue. But now he questions if it is too late in the shooting season for these projects to go into preproduction in B.C.

‘If a production opened an office now and started a build they wouldn’t be ready to shoot until October,’ he says. ‘And no one typically wants to shoot in Canada beyond October.’

B.C. is also busy with a strong slate of U.S. TV series, although Hawkins notes that the number of series shooting is only about half as many as there were back in what he dubs ‘the halcyon days of 2006,’ when 25 offshore TV productions spent over $432.7 million in the province.

‘The economy is to blame,’ he suggests, noting that the overall number of TV series being greenlit has been reduced. ‘There are also a lot of changes happening in the TV industry due to new delivery platforms, which is affecting the number of TV shows being made, and the budgets.’

Still, B.C. has attracted new series, and held on to some long-running shows. ‘We have five series from Warner Bros. shooting this summer, which is really huge for us,’ notes Hawkins. 

The Warner Bros. projects include the fifth season of Supernatural, the ninth season of Smallville, season two of Fringe (which relocated from New York), and the new series Human Target (for Fox TV), based on the DC Comics graphic novel about a man who is hired to assume the identity of people in danger and puts himself in the line of fire. The action series stars Mark Valley (Fringe), Jackie Earle Haley (Watchmen), Danny Glover and Chi McBride (Pushing Daisies). 

Warner Bros. is also bringing its remake of the 1980s alien lizard series V to Vancouver. The ABC series stars Lost’s Elizabeth Mitchell as a Homeland Security agent coming up against an alien invasion.

Two new CW series are also making B.C. their home base: Parental Discretion Advised stars Britt Robertson (Swingtown) as a girl who, after years spent in foster homes, finds her biological parents; and The Vampire Diaries, based on the cult-classic books about a woman (Nina Dobrev of Degrassi: The Next Generation) who falls for two vampire brothers – one good and one evil (Ian Somerhalder of Lost and Paul Wesley of Smallville).

The SyFy Channel series Caprica is in production July through February and Stargate Universe shoots through to mid-October. Season four of USA Network’s Psych is in production through to November.

One area of production clearly facing a downswing this summer in B.C. is MOWs and miniseries, with about half as many of these TV one-offs shooting.

‘Broadcasters just aren’t making as many movies,’ says Croome. ‘I also think these projects may be most susceptible to considering tax credits in the U.S. I am hopeful we will see a return of some of these MOWs and miniseries because we need diverse production – it gives us a more rounded employment profile.’

TV movies currently shooting include Lifetime’s Cinderella Pact, starring Poppy Montgomery (Without a Trace), based on a novel by Sarah Strohmeyer; and the four-hour SyFy miniseries Alice, based on the Lewis Carroll books, starring Kathy Bates (Revolutionary Road), Alessandro Juliani (Battlestar Galactica), Matt Frewer (Watchmen), Andrew Lee Potts (Primeval) and Caterina Scorsone (Power Play).

A recent gain in the value of the loonie against the greenback is a cause for concern for the Canadian industry, but Croome isn’t too worried at this point.

‘I do think that our value proposition continues despite the fact that the dollar is a little higher,’ says Croome. ‘It is always an easier sell when the dollar is lower, but even when we weren’t the cheapest, B.C. has a number of advantages: it’s close to L.A., we have almost a million square feet of stage space, we have crews that know how to do big shows, and producers know they will get a good product here. As an industry, so long as we make sure we give producers great benefits for the right cost, we will continue to do well.’

Quebec has increased its tax incentive to lure more production, but Hawkins doesn’t view the east as competition. ‘The producers who like to shoot in Quebec will continue to shoot in Quebec – and they run out of facilities very quickly,’ he points out. ‘And we get a different type of business than Toronto. If productions need a big-city location they don’t consider us. If they need mountains or forests they don’t consider Toronto. We have different looks. So we worry about keeping our own infrastructure in place, not chasing Quebec or Toronto.’