Hollywood is coming to Manitoba, bringing lights, cameras and plenty of employment for locals.
With a busy season of filming kicking into high gear across the province, the film industry expects to generate record revenues this year.
“This will be our highest ever so we’re looking at a quarter billion that we did in production in that fiscal year, which is a huge step forward,” said Ginny Collins, communications and marketing director for Manitoba Film and Music.
“Then the government of Manitoba making the tax credit permanent gave a big vote of confidence, so this is a tipping point for the industry right now.”
WATCH: Manitoba’s film and video tax incentive made permanent
The Manitoba Government provides a generous tax credit that reduces film-makers labour costs, encouraging productions to use local talent, which in turn allows local artists to find employment closer to home.
“We have a lot of bigger productions coming, bigger Hollywood films coming to Winnipeg and we don’t have to travel to work. We stay right here and it’s great.” Winnipeg makeup artist, Kim Wright said.
The Hallmark Channel was working on a Christmas movie called Merry and Bright in the Exchange District Tuesday.
“They have a very favourable provincial labour incentive here and the crews are really talented. There’s a good crew base, and so those two things combined were the primary driving factors (coming to Winnipeg),” said Anthony Fankhauser, line producer for the Los Angeles company shooting Merry and Bright.
Producers told Global News this is just one of six movies set to film in Winnipeg over the next few months.