LIGHTS, CAMERA, NETFLIX
Streaming giant setting up shop in Toronto, with up to 1,850 jobs promised,
Video-streaming giant Netflix is setting up a production hub in Toronto’s Port Lands, leasing space from local studios on the redeveloping east downtown waterfront coveted by Sidewalk Labs for potential future high-tech neighbourhoods.
California-based Netflix announced Tuesday it has signed leases for four new Cinespace Film Studios sound stages and offices totalling 164,000 square feet, and for another four studios from Pinewood Toronto Studios, totalling 84,580 square feet, including offices.
The multi-year leases — no time frame was revealed — will create jobs for up to 1,850 Canadians per year, Netflix said, adding projects already booked include horror anthology series Guillermo del Toro Presents Ten After Midnight and the holiday film Let It Snow.
Jim Mirkopoulos, Cinespace vicepresident, said Netflix will be in space leased by Cinespace from Ports Toronto, near Cherry St., after Mayor John Tory asked agencies in Toronto to review land holdings for potential studio sites to alleviate a shortage crimping Toronto’s production boom.
Mirkopoulos, whose company has a growing Etobicoke campus and plans to build new studios nearby, said his firm went to Los Angeles last summer to pitch the former Port Lands ferry terminal and an adjacent building now having its roof raised to 10 metres to accommo- date shooting.
“What’s nice about this new opportunity is we don’t have to evict anyone, we don’t have to block anyone out of existing stages. It’s brand new inventory and someone has the opportunity to take it,” Mirkopoulos said, adding Netflix bit and that started six months of lease negotiations.
Studios knew that director del Toro and local producer J. Miles Dale, who won Oscars with the locally shot The Shape of Water, wanted to shoot future projects in Toronto, he said.
But the real star is the Port Lands, Mirkopoulos said, predicting the studio cluster there will grow.
“Our clients have been telling us for many, many years that the Port Lands is a strategically advantageous place to be — it’s minutes away from the best (downtown) hotels, from some of the most often-used locations in Toronto, from suppliers and from homes” of many film workers.
“The Port Lands is really strategically important to this growing billion-dollar industry,” Mirkopoulos said. “It cannot be overstated how important it is that this large piece of inventory coming online — and Pinewood’s choice to do a hub — is for the Port Lands.”
The roughly 800-acre swath of former industrial land is being redeveloped with more than $1.2 billion in flood-proofing funded by the city, provincial and federal governments through Waterfront Toronto.
Last week, the Star revealed that Google sister company Sidewalk Labs, Waterfront Toronto’s preferred development partner for the 12-acre Quayside district on Queens Quay, has drafted proposals to grow its urban innovation zone onto 350 acres of the Port Lands.
While the plans, and a proposal the city remit a share of the zone’s property taxes to the tech giant, generated fierce criticism, Mirkopoulos said that vision would dovetail with a studio hub.
“Sidewalk has very much a work/live/play vision,” he said. “We certainly envision building even more space in the Port Lands, and how wonderful would it be for a film industry technician to live in a unit on the Port Lands and be able to walk or bike to work. It would be fantastic.”
Nanci MacLean, president of Pinewood Toronto Studios, credited the location with helping land Netflix, along with the production tax credit affirmed by the province last fall and talented crews grown over the past decade to now rival anything available in Hollywood.
“I actually believe that Toron- to is the true Hollywood North,” she said. “I know we like to say that, but I actually see that as a thing now. I’ve never seen the film and television industry so rich as it is now.”
Pinewood Toronto Studios, majority-owned by Bell Media, now has 325,000 square feet of dedicated studio space at its Commissioners St. site. An expansion underway will boost it to 550,000 square feet, Canada’s biggest studio hub, MacLean said.
In an email, Mayor John Tory credited his frequent trips to Los Angeles with helping to woo Netflix and other produc- tion deals, and revealed that he will again be California-bound in April.
“I know it is important that these relationships are maintained and cultivated so that Toronto continues to be at the top of the list when these companies look at expansion,” Tory wrote, adding he will thank Netflix in person and pursue other “significant potential projects” for the city.
“I believe the fact we’ve made headlines around the world with today’s (Netflix) announcement will help us with that ongoing outreach — we have great crews, great studio space and great customer service.”
J. Miles Dale, who is developing Ten After Midnight with del Toro and his own Netflix series, 44 Chapters About Men, raved to The Canadian Press about shooting in Canada and working with the streaming giant. “You can say whatever you want, you can show whatever you want, you can show real adult situations without the kind of censorship that comes in,” he said.
Netflix has been criticized by Canadian broadcasters because, as a foreign digital company, it does not have to collect or remit federal or provincial sales tax, or pay into the Canada Media Fund for the creation of Canadian programming.
Netflix in 2017 said it would spend $500 million over five years to fund made-in-Canada content.
Toronto-based actor/filmmaker Jay Baruchel, star of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, told The Canadian Press: “If there are more jobs for people in the city, great. And if it increases the chance of people here making (stuff ), then terrific. “When a big corporation comes to town, it could be awesome, but it’s not guaranteed to be so ... Whatever puts resources in the hands of talented Canadian artists, I’m all for it.”