On Screen Manitoba

The following article was written by Brian Morton and was originally published in the Vancouver Sun on May 28, 2012.

B.C.'s feature film production sector has seen better days, the television side's looking up for 2012, and local productions are hurting.

But The Real Housewives of Vancouver is a financial winner.

That's how the province's film industry insiders see things so far this year, as new television pilots shot in Vancouver are picked up while major films that B.C. had coveted head elsewhere. RoboCop is off to Toronto and Wolverine is going to Australia.

"I think the overall outlook is very good in TV," said BC Film Commissioner Susan Croome. "A lot of pilots were picked up.

"It's a bit early to tell, but we do have some concerns about feature film activity after the current features are wrapped. We don't know yet what the future holds in the feature film department."

While year-to-date figures aren't yet available, in March it was revealed that Ontario had overtaken B.C. as a film and television production centre in Canada for the first time in many years despite overall spending on the west coast increasing 16 per cent in 2011 to nearly $1.2 billion.

Although Community, Sport and Cultural Development Minister Ida Chong painted a rosy picture with B.C. production spending last year up $167 million over 2010, B.C.'s overall ranking as a North American production centre dropped from third to fourth place in 2011.

There was a cumulative total of 281 productions undertaken in B.C. in 2011, including contract work conducted here for films primarily produced elsewhere.

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