Alberta loses ‘Superman’ movie gig
CALGARY – Canada’s lack of military hardware has proven to be kryptonite for filming the latest Superman movie in Alberta.
Superman: Man of Steel will be filmed in the Chicago area instead of Alberta, Lindsay Blackett, the province’s minister of culture and community spirit confirmed Monday.
“It was us or them,” he said of the film that was one of two feature films worth $100 million and $200 million that had looked to land in Alberta.
“From what I understand (the production) needed aircraft carriers and the Canadian military doesn’t have those.
“They needed attack helicopters and things like that and we just don’t have them and the U.S. was willing to give them whatever they wanted.”
Despite the snub, Alberta is still very much respected in the film industry, said Blackett.
“It’s logistics and equipment,” he said.
“Not competitiveness, not our crews, not location, not the amount of money or anything like that — it was just down to the hard assets.”
And the province is in talks to draw other major productions here.
“We’ll be talking to Warner Brothers about others,” he said.
“We’ve talked to Disney about something, nothing real immediate, but there’s a couple other ones from some other big houses that hopefully we’ll hear about in the next little while.”
Despite Blackett’s claim losing the Superman movie doesn’t reflect poorly on the Alberta film industry, a source close to the project told the Sun Alberta lost the big-budget flick because the industry in Alberta isn’t attractive enough to Hollywood.
“That is at least 15 weeks of a major motion picture that was lost to the Alberta Industry,” said the source, who asked not to be named.
“The Alberta Grant system is not working at making Alberta attractive to Hollywood and this is just another nail in the coffin of a fragile industry.”
Studio work on the latest Superman movie is still slated to take place in Vancouver later in the year.
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