Canada has long been used by Hollywood for location shoots, partly because of the exchange rate. In fact, Vancouver has been nicknamed "Hollywood North" because there's so much movie and TV business conducted there.james1969 wrote: <snip>
I hear Hollywood often use other countries like Canada and New Zealand now for film locations, not only is the scenery spactacular, unspoiled comparitivley, but the costs and exchange rates are favourable. We done King Kong, The Lion, Witch, and the wardrobe series of movies, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Hobbit Series, Avatar, Shrek. to name a few. Yet no one can find us on a map, even LORDE still gets called an Australian,
For example, the re-make of Battlestar Galactica was shot in and around the area. In fact, I recognized many of the city landmarks from when I was a grad student there 35 years ago. Many of the cast members were Canadians as well, such as Michael Hogan (Col. Tigh) and Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol). Currently, the AMC series Hell on Wheels is shot in southern Alberta. (I don't know the actual locations, but I certainly recognize the landscape.) Also, the Clint Eastwood movie Unforgiven was also filmed in the province.
Even earlier, the movie Silver Streak (with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor) was filmed in Canada. I saw that movie during my senior undergrad year with some of my dorm mates and we had a hoot looking for familiar locations. There's a police chase near the end of the flick that was filmed on a city bridge just off campus, which we all recognized. Better yet was how Calgary was passed off as Kansas City. When the movie showed the downtown area from the air, the whole audience roared with laughter because the most prominent landmark in the city at that time, the Calgary Tower, stuck out like a sore thumb.
I grew up in northern British Columbia not far from the Alaska Highway. During the summers, we often had a lot of American tourists passing through town on their way up to the 49th state. I think many of them were pleasantly surprised that Canada was not only so large, it had some terrific scenery as well.