Despite a scathing CBC headline that ‘Telefilm wants U.S. stars in Canadian movies’ and a feisty statement from ACTRA that called Telefilm chair Michel Roy’s ideas ‘ill-informed and myopic,’ the Crown corporation says it doesn’t plan to change its ‘leading actors’ rules at all.

‘When you look at a 0.8% market share for English-language productions, we can all agree that we need to change the way we do some things,’ Roy tells Playback Daily. ‘In this context, I said that our coproduction guidelines must be reviewed, relaxed and adapted to current needs.’

Telefilm Canada already allows one foreign actor in one of the two leading roles per movie; so imported talent is nothing new.

Perhaps at the heart of the issue are Canada’s coproduction treaties, which were on the table for discussion in Telefilm roundtables with the industry over the past year. Producers say Canada needs more flexible treaties — including the ability to cast marquee-value international stars — to compete effectively in the global marketplace. Rhombus Films’ Blindness (a three-way copro by Canada, Japan and Brazil), starring Julianne Moore alongside Toronto’s Don McKellar, is such an example.

ACTRA national exec director Stephen Waddell says the union is okay with the rules as they exist. He fears, however, that Telefilm is looking at letting more lead talent in the door. ‘We’re talking about two leading roles being non-Canadian,’ he says.

Telefilm denies it has any such plans.

What triggered the controversy was a comment in Roy’s speech at the Prime Time conference in Ottawa on Friday, when he referred to a ‘relaxation of rules governing participation of foreign stars in Canadian productions… particularly in English Canada.’

To clarify, Roy tells Playback Daily his speech was ‘a call to action.’

‘Based on roundtable discussions across Canada with numerous representatives from the industry, they put forward ideas to move forward — international development, national distribution of feature films and how to measure their success, marketing efforts, transition towards digital platforms,’ he adds.

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