It’s an open secret in film that stories set in certain locations are usually filmed somewhere else.
During the Golden Age’ of Hollywood, movies set in exotic places were routinely filmed on studio soundstages. The beloved film Casablanca, set in the Moroccan city, was primarily shot on the Warner Bros. studio lot. While Back to the Future,
These days, Toronto, Ontario—Canada’s largest city—often acts as a functional stand-in for other large cities when American filmmakers need a quick and convenient place to shoot. In fact, this happens so often that, in recent years, the city has earned the nickname ‘Hollywood North’. As a long-time Toronto resident and filmmaker myself, I can vouch for the fact that this nickname is well-deserved.
But why did this come to pass? Why did such notable films as Good Will Hunting, Cinderella Man, Suicide Squad, Dirty Work, The Shape of Water, and even Chicago use Toronto as a backdrop instead of the cities where their stories were actually set? For anyone who has ever wondered about this, I’ve made a short list of the reasons.
Pre-Existing Production Infrastructure
When Toronto embarked on its deliberate campaign to become a viable shooting location alternative to Los Angeles, one of the major features it had to offer American film studios was pre-existing production infrastructure. Although the city wasn’t usually used for big-budget movies in the 1970s and 1980s, it was home to Canada’s domestic film and television production industry, and thus, already had the studios, soundstages, and production facilities in place when Hollywood eventually came knocking. The city and its immediate surrounding area also offer a naturally diverse range of places for interesting backdrops and settings—urban, suburban, and rural—that can easily double for locations around the world.
Tax Incentives
Starting in the late 1990s, the Canadian federal government and Ontario provincial government began to offer heavy tax breaks and monetary credits designed to attract film production. Both levels of government expanded and increased these incentives in the early 2000s. As filmmaking is quite an expensive business under the best of circumstances, these cost offsets have played a decisive role in the decision by Hollywood studios to transfer many of their productions to Toronto.
Talented Workforce and Acting Pool
A city of more than 4 million people, with another few million people living in the outer suburbs, Toronto is home to a vast wealth of talented actors, which Hollywood studios find to be very convenient. One of the drawbacks normally associated with shooting outside of Southern California is the pool of potential ancillary characters and extras isn’t normally as deep. However, with Toronto, this isn’t the case. Should a need arise for a visiting director to fill an additional film role or two, the local population can more than accommodate. Also, the fact that the city is extremely multicultural bodes well for productions that call for diverse casts.
Toronto International Film Festival
Finally, there is the Toronto International Film Festival, Along with Cannes, Venice, and Sundance, TIFF is one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world, attracting many of the global film industry’s top talent each year. Because the world’s biggest movie producers, directors, studio executives, and actors spend a significant amount of time in Toronto, they can more easily envision it as a viable host for their future projects.