A U.S. fantasy drama The Shape of Water, about a woman who falls in love with a captured humanoid amphibian creature, led the Oscar nominations this year with 13 nods, including the top prize for best picture.
But the action wasn’t all south of the border. It’s also taking place in Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario.
According to Justin Cutler, film commissioner at the Ontario Media Development Corporation, the TV and film industry is contributing a big boost to the local economy.
“In 2017, we had 1.6 billion dollars worth of production spend land in the province, so these were dollars spent on Ontario business,” Cutler said. “And that generated about 32,000 jobs for the province, so we’re incredibly happy about that.”
He also said the number of Netflix shows produced in Ontario increased to nine this year, up from three for all of 2017.
“We’ve seen an increase in the number of Netflix series and films that have approached the province this year alone,” he said. “We’ve already had nine productions in the province from Netflix. But it’s also is not limited to Netflix, you know, we also have Hulu, Amazon, YouTube Red, are are all producing in the province. ”
In a deal with the federal government announced last October, Netflix agreed to spend at least $500 million over the next five years to fund original Canadian productions.
Data compiled by researchers at insurance comparison site GoCompare found that Canada is the third most filmed country in the world.
They used the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) that included both film and TV productions, breaking down productions by filming areas and locations.
Katherine Feng, NTD News, Toronto
