TORONTO — Will Smith and Jared Leto are working in Toronto and Chris Pine and Zoe Saldana are on their way to Vancouver — but there will also be impressive star power this summer in Montreal.
Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Kevin Spacey, Christopher Walken, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy and many others will be in the city making movies.
Adams, Renner and Whitaker star in Story of Your Life, a sci-fi movie about a doctor hired by the military to communicate with aliens who have initiated contact with humans.
Based on a 1998 short story by Ted Chiang, the movie will be directed in Montreal by homegrown filmmaker Denis Villeneuve from early June until mid-August.
Story of Your Life is Villeneuve’s first English-language film to be made in Montreal.
The director’s early French-language films — including 2009’s Polytechnique and 2010’s Incendies — were shot in Montreal but 2013’s Prisoners (starring Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal) was filmed in Georgia and Enemy (starring Gyllenhaal) was made in Toronto.
Villeneuve’s latest film, Sicario, starring Emily Blunt and Josh Brolin, was shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The movie will compete for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival in May.
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Spacey, Walken and Garner will be joined by Robbie Amell and Mark Consuelos in the comedy Nine Lives, which will be directed in Montreal by director Barry Sonnenfeld (Men in Black) from early May to mid-July.
The movie is about a businessman who ends up trapped in the body of his family’s cat.
A long list of stars — including Lawrence, Whitaker, Fassbender and McAvoy — are coming and going now through early September as Montreal hosts production of X-Men: Apocalypse.
Directed by Bryan Singer, who made 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past in the city, the new movie also stars Sophie Turner, Olivia Munn, Rose Byrne, Oscar Isaac, Evan Peters, Nicholas Hoult and Tye Sheridan.
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