Film and TV production in British Columbia is headed towards one of its busiest years in 2015, according to Creative B.C.

The provincial agency told Playback Daily it has not yet secured production expenditures data for the current fiscal year to March 31, 2015, but it is “seeing an increase in production volumes from the last fiscal year.”

Creative B.C. added that, for the year to March 1, 2015,  the agency issued 261 tax credits for an estimated $1.84 billion in provincial production volume.

That’s up on the $1.4 billion in production activity from 248 projects during the year to March 31, 2014, based on $1.08 billion in foreign film and TV production and another $366 million in local B.C. production expenditures.

Based on the latest tax credit statistics, those foreign and local production levels will not set a record for overall volume in B.C. for the year to March 2015.

But that production activity represents a major rebound from 2012 when a Save B.C. Film Industry campaign rang alarm bells after the province failed to match tax credit increases in Ontario and Quebec.

In fiscal 2011, production in B.C. reached $1.19 billion in budget expenditures, compared with $1.26 billion in production activity in Ontario.

That was before the Canadian dollar rose, and Hollywood studios looking for added savings when shooting in Canada weighed up B.C.’s labour-based tax credit with all-spend tax credits in Ontario and Quebec.

Vancouver is currently busy with movie shoots like Steven Spielberg’s The BFG project that is executive produced by Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy, and Nicolas Powell’s DARC, along with TV show shoots for Arrow, Cedar Cove and Impostor.

– Vancouver image courtesy of Shutterstock