Ontario Ready for Hollywood Post-Strikes Reality: “It’s a Reset Year for Everyone”

As seen in The Hollywood Reporter.

Ontario got a much-needed boost amid Hollywood’s unexpectedly slow post-strikes return when Amazon MGM Studios launched a production hub at Pinewood Toronto Studios.

In January 2024, the major studio unveiled a deal with Pinewood Group to exclusively use five new soundstages and office space totaling around 160,000 square feet. “That was an immense vote of confidence in the province,” Justin Cutler, Ontario’s film commissioner at Ontario Creates, tells The Hollywood Reporter.

Amazon MGM Studios had already shot around 40 films and TV series in the Canadian province. But the multiyear soundstage lease crystallized how the return of the major studios and streamers had suddenly roared back to life and was building momentum.

“Amazon has worked in Ontario on bigger projects like The Boys and Reacher, which have gone on to break records for their platform, and that’s built a lot of confidence in our crews, in our locations and our incentives to invest from a long-term point of view in Ontario,” Cutler adds.

Of course, the major studios and streamers haven’t returned to Ontario fast enough for many, or with as deep pockets after releasing the pause button post-strikes. And a leaner Hollywood has reverberated further down the industry food chain.

“I do feel that there’s a constant pressure on budgets to be lowered, and I feel like that’s becoming a new normal,” Martin Katz, producer on David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, which has a North American premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, tells THR as he seeks to finance and shoot new projects.

But looking to the future, local production players are banking on Ontario’s built-in advantages for American producers — generous film tax breaks and currency savings, world-class talent and crews, and established infrastructure — as they continue in Hollywood’s slipstream. “Our value proposition is as strong as it’s ever been,” insists Karen Thorne-Stone, president and CEO of Ontario Creates, which markets the province to Hollywood and other foreign producers.

That includes recent changes in Ontario to simplify its digital animation and visual effects tax credit and to bolster regional bonuses to get production across more of the province, encourage sustainable production training with a Green Screen program, core workforce training and continuing film studio construction.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein for Netflix, starring Jacob Elordi and Oscar Issac, is shooting at Cinespace Studios’ Marine Terminal campus, complete with an ominous ship docked in an adjoining harbor. “It’s a reset year for everyone,” says Magali Simard, director of industry and community relations at Cinespace.

Her studio complex is shortly to break ground on more soundstages and support space at the Marine Terminal location as part of a planned expansion. “We’re definitely confident about the bounce back. We felt it every day since the early spring and the next two years we expect to be pretty much full, and we hope the city is full,” Simard says.

She adds that Ontario stands to seize its share of post-strikes Hollywood production, and more, given its long-established collaboration with U.S. producers. “When you look at global production volumes, the cities and the regions that stand to keep what they have and to be able to grow are the ones that have a pretty perfect ecosystem of incentives, of infrastructure, of talent, of forward-looking spaces — which we have here,” Simard explains.

Jennifer Liscio, vp tax incentives and business affairs at Entertainment Partners, the payroll house that also advises Hollywood producers on tax incentives, agrees Ontario will maintain and grow its market leadership going forward. “Ontario continues to be well-positioned and Ontario has made an effort to simplify some of the red tape and the administrative burden of applying for tax credits that are always attractive to our clients, who are predominantly U.S. productions,” Liscio says.

But no one expects a happily ever after scenario, given the streaming industry’s continuing reductions in spending. “It will come back; it won’t come back to what it was,” Paul Bronfman, chairman and CEO of Comweb Corp. and a senior adviser to Pinewood Toronto Studios, tells THR.

With Hollywood as a key future growth driver, Ontario saw record production activity across the province before the latest industry shutdown caused by the dual strikes. And the province has continued to build out its infrastructure with new studios and a larger and more skilled workforce, trained and ready for high-end film and TV production as Ontario kicks back into gear.

The province is also moving ahead with more environmental sustainability and workforce diversity measures to encourage the return of foreign producers. Notably, local Ontario producers, having long built resilience and perseverance into their business model, are also primed for growth after the Hollywood strikes.

Christina Piovesan, a producer and president of the indie banner First Generation Films, just co-produced, along with Elevation Pictures, Bonjour Tristesse, the adaptation of Françoise Sagan’s coming-of-age novel set for a world premiere at TIFF.

“There are a lot of folks looking up to Canada, because we can execute for less, because as always our proximity to the States,” says Piovesan. 

Besides having to take on greater financial risks to develop their films and TV series, local Ontario producers are also having to hedge their bets with more commercial projects destined for the world market.

An example is Jennifer Holness, a producer on director R.T. Thorne’s 40 Acres, a dystopian thriller to world premiere at TIFF, which stars Danielle Deadwyler and centers on a Black family of farmers who settled in Canada after the American Civil War and must fight off an organized militia. Holness describes her latest feature, shot in Ontario, as an “elevated” genre pic for a risk-averse industry.

“It has its own spin and takes you on a journey less expected and which isn’t just spinning the tropes the way people want them,” she argues. Other TIFF 2024-bound movies that were shot in Ontario include José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço’s Young Werther, veteran cinematographer Rachel Morrison’s feature directorial debut The Fire Inside, Kaniehtiio Horn’s Seeds, Sook-Yin Lee’s Paying for It, Sofia Bohdanowicz’s Measures for a Funeral and Jason Buxton’s Canada-Ireland co-production Sharp Corner.

Ontario’s domestic production sector, long the tugboat of the provincial industry, has faced falling license fees from local broadcasters, and so is casting its net wider these days for international co-production partners and private investors.

An example is Ontario indie producer Aircraft Pictures partnering with co-producers France’s Nolita and South Africa’s Film Afrika on The Emperor’s Stone: The Search of La Buse’s Treasure, a six-part family adventure series. Anthony Leo, co-president of Aircraft, says Ontario producers can no longer just rely on a major streamer to finance a project, or a lot of content being produced on the hop, as during the now-ended Peak TV boom in the province.

“It’s a bit of a shock to the system if you’re not used to co-productions,” Leo says after a host of recent conversations with Americans wanting to set up a co-venture partnership with an Ontario producer, rather than just sell a project to a U.S. network.

Elsewhere, Blue Ant alum Josh Bowen recently launched Cutting Class Media and has pacted with Lakeside Animation with plans to produce 10 adult animated dramas and comedies over five years for the world market. Bowen tells THR he’s not relying on presales, and instead will bet on global streamers needing premium content eventually as their content slates thin.

Says Bowen: “If I can go out in two years and the streamers are saying, ‘We’ve got nothing in the pipeline’ and I can get a first window and instead of paying $20 million for the commission, I can pay $5 million, it’s a pretty darn good deal.”