Hollywood Versus Vancouver: Is Canadian Film Finally Coming into Its Own?

Vancouver, British Columbia is a busy town, full of a surprising number of film crews. It's been like that since the 1980s, when it first became "Hollywood North". Initially, it was an easy target for film crews down in California looking for a cheap place to shoot. But over the years, it's grown into a major competitor for business with the previously thought invincible Hollywood. With so much work going north and Hollywood box office profits increasingly going south, how long can it be before the Vancouver film industry supersedes its California rival?

On the surface, it would seem like a slamdunk in favor of Hollywood, David and Goliath with Goliath winning David's head for a keyring. Los Angeles is one of the world's supercities. Greater Vancouver sprawls, but at three million, it doesn't come close to LA's population or production (or pollution). Hollywood has been making movies and whalloping the competition for a century now. Even avant garde France fears California. Vancouver has only been seriously in the commercial film business for about two decades. How could it possibly compete?

Further, Hollywood has been paying its own way for most of that century. But a major reason why Hollywood producers sent their productions north in the first place was because Canadian cinema and television were so economically feeble in the face of the American juggernaut that the government offered (and still does) cash incentives to homegrown cinema. By filming their productions in Canada, producers could claim these incentives, even muscling out Canadian competition. The chronically weak Canadian dollar was also encouraging. So, American producers started filming more and more productions up north, which naturally poured more revenue into Vancouver and less into Hollywood.