Like the entertainment industry everywhere, Ontario’s film and television industry has absorbed its share of external shocks — the Los Angeles strikes, the hangover from peak TV, and a streaming boom going in the opposite direction. But production outside Greater Toronto has emerged as a welcome buffer, with regional bonus incentives, cheap labor and a variety of prime locations helping the province withstand Hollywood’s retreat.
Cities and towns across northern Ontario, which have already shifted from mining and manufacturing to hosting major films and TV shows, are rising to the logistical challenges of turbulent times. While talent, crews and infrastructure remain the attraction, tax breaks, currency savings and government rebates are the real superpower.
“Beautiful locations and strong infrastructure get you into the conversation, but it’s the incentives that help close the deal,” says David Anselmo, CEO and president of Sudbury-based Banner Hideaway Pictures.
Provincial incentives can be stacked with the federal rebate to an additional tax credit rate of 45 percent — an important lever in an era where every green light is scrutinized. “License fees are more stringent, and buyers are more selective,” Anselmo adds. “But I actually think this favors places like northern Ontario, because we’re no longer selling a theory. We’re offering a proven production ecosystem.”
That confidence is reverberating across the province, even as Ontario faces additional competitive pressures from an increase in British Columbia’s foreign film tax credit. “If Kingston can replace Maine, we have better incentives that will help you with your budget and bottom line,” says Joan Lawton, Kingston’s film commissioner. The southwestern Ontario city recently hosted photo shoots for the movie Peacock Masked Devil: John Wayne Gacy Amazon miniseries and scripted biography of Muhammad Ali The greatestBoth made use of Kingston Prison, a former maximum security prison turned museum.
The economic case for filming outside of Toronto is strengthened through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund (NOHF), a tier-based grant that attracts eligible producers to the province’s northern regions and can be placed on top of existing provincial and federal film tax credits. The fund has already contributed $2 million each to the Paramount medical drama Sky Med And the third season of Hallmark When hope calls To bring production north.
“We want Toronto to be busy,” says Patrick O’Hearn, CEO of Cultural Industries Ontario North (CION), which develops productions across six major centres: Sudbury, North Bay, Timmins and Sault Ste. Marie, Thunder Bay and Parry Sound. “But we have already determined that there is no central hub that has to be the ultimate and final point of production. We can use the entire province and all of this great country to produce amazing film and television.” Sudbury was particularly active. The latest footage includes the directorial debut of Jason Biggs Stay awaya bloody fantasy action comedy Death stalkerstarring Patton Oswalt and executive produced by Slash of Guns N’ Roses, and a body horror feature Blessing From director Jeff Renfro.
The city’s landscape—the lakes, the wilderness, and the rural hinterland—has proven to be as attractive as its infrastructure. “People look at us as an industrial city, and we are, but we have beautiful, wild lakes here,” says Clayton Drake, Sudbury’s film executive. “Outstanding talent often finds gorgeous Airbnbs or cabins that give them the experience of escaping up north while filming.”
This promise of natural beauty was brought to life in great measure by Guillermo del Toro Frankensteinwhich used the icy surface of Lake Nipissing just outside North Bay to double the frozen expanse of the Arctic, as Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) pursues the creature (Jacob Elordi) by sled and dogs. “We knew we needed an Arctic setting, and a certain time of year,” says producer Jay Miles Dale. “North Bay was perfect for that.” “Literally just by getting off the ground and going west, we got this beautiful, unobstructed view of the sunset.”
Tyler Levine, producer Michael McGowan All my silly sorrowswas also filmed in North Bay and found that the small-town rhythm suited the production perfectly. “Filming in North Bay is like having your own big studio, where instead of hauling a golf cart from one lot to the next, you just drive a few minutes down the road to the next location,” he says. “The people are uniquely kind and helpful. The city is beautiful and not in a rush.” Most mornings, he and McGowan would run along Lake Nipissing, sometimes joined by the crew. “It was like an emotional production meeting, but more beautiful and refreshing.”
Further south, in Parry Sound, director Megan Park filmed her second film, My old ass – a fantasy drama starring Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza, produced by Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment – set among the forest landscapes and lakeside cottages of the Muskokas. The location was only a two-hour drive from Toronto. “It’s not that far off, relatively speaking,” points out Jeff Thom, economic development officer for Parry Sound.
The threat of further disruption — whether from repeat strikes or President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs on foreign films — has prompted regional authorities to actively explore alternatives. “We’re all looking for ways we can collaborate in different ways,” Kingston’s Lawton says. “Can we do more treaty co-productions with countries like Ireland, who are really upping the ante with their incentives and investments? Can we do more inter-county filming?”
Ontario regions are also investing in local storytellers. Director Lisa Jackson is working on The fire of medicinea documentary about an Anishinaabe couple reclaiming a traditional healing ceremony on the Kitchenohmaikosip Ininawag Reserve in northwestern Ontario—a project that uses the region’s stunning landscapes as the backdrop to a story about cultural survival and renewal. “It’s an amazingly beautiful and quiet area,” Jackson says. For this community, she adds, the ceremony she is documenting is “within a lived experience” — “a very valid way of looking at our place in the world.”
Fellow Canadian director Tricia Black takes a different approach, anchoring her horror-comedy shots Side B: Dusk In the geological drama of the Canadian Shield – a vast rock formation exposed across the province estimated to be 4 billion years old. The film, now in development, follows two cousins trying to solve a cold case involving a rock duo that disappeared without a trace in 1999. “We know more about what’s in the sky, above us and beyond our planet, and we don’t focus as much on what’s under our feet,” Black says. In northern Ontario, it turns out the ground underfoot is worth caring for — in more ways than one.
