What “Hollywood North” actually makes

This is a researched feature, separate from Nick Atwal’s personal film reviews.

“Hollywood North” is a nickname, not a definition. It gets stuck on a U.S. studio feature that hired local crews for a few months, a Canadian drama developed and owned in Vancouver, and an animated film that never had a camera crew at all. Nicknames are generous like that. Same label, different owners, different payrolls, different incentives. Only some of them count as Canadian. Knowing which is which separates reporting from repeating a press release.

This guide follows a project from financing to finished credits. Tax rules change, so the rates below describe the system as the province published it for 2025 and 2026. They’re an explanation, not tax advice. Please don’t file anything based on a film website.

1. Development and financing

   The first question: who owns the project?

   A project starts long before a camera rolls. Someone secures the rights, a writer delivers a script, a producer assembles financing and a production plan. Nobody has yelled “action” yet, and there’s already paperwork. Location services are only one part of that story. Who controls the copyright sorts most British Columbia productions into one of two groups.

   Domestic production is Canadian-owned. A Canadian producer controls the project and, if it meets the federal Canadian-content rules, it can be certified and draw on Canadian funders and tax credits. Foreign location and service production, the Canadian Media Producers Association’s term for the other group, is commissioned by producers based outside Canada. They hire Canadian companies and crews to make a film or series here and keep the copyright themselves. In one, the copyright stays here. In the other, the work stays and the copyright goes home.

   British Columbia’s two main incentives follow the same split. Film Incentive BC is for Canadian-controlled production companies with a permanent establishment in the province, making productions that meet Canadian-content conditions. The Production Services Tax Credit is open to domestic and foreign producers and has no Canadian-content requirement. A production uses one or the other, not both. Each is calculated on qualified B.C. labour expenditures rather than the overall budget, so the province returns a share of what a production spends on British Columbia workers.

   The rates went up in 2025. The provincial budget tabled on March 4, 2025 raised the basic Film Incentive BC credit from 35 to 40 per cent and the basic Production Services Tax Credit from 28 to 36 per cent, for productions starting principal photography on or after January 1, 2025. It also added a 2 per cent service-production credit for major productions with B.C. costs above $200 million. Federal credits run alongside them: the Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office (CAVCO) and the Canada Revenue Agency administer the Canadian Film or Video Production Tax Credit for certified Canadian productions, and a 16 per cent Film or Video Production Services Tax Credit on qualified Canadian labour for productions that don’t meet the Canadian-content test. Yes, that’s a lot of credits. None of them are the kind that roll at the end.

2. Physical production

   B.C. service production, 2024/25: $2,127 million (CMPA Profile 2025)

   This is the part most people picture, mostly because it has trucks. Studios, streets, crews, equipment and permits turn the plan into principal photography, the phase most location claims are really about.

   It’s also where foreign service work shows up most clearly in British Columbia’s numbers. The CMPA’s Profile 2025 report, using figures supplied by provincial film agencies, puts foreign location and service production in B.C. at $2,127 million in the 2024/25 fiscal year (April 2024 to March 2025). That was up from $1,811 million the year before and the largest of any province, ahead of Ontario and Quebec. The same report says Canadian-content production led by B.C.-based producers fell by $159 million that year. Service work up, homegrown work down. Both figures cover the whole province, not the City of Vancouver. Nationally, the CMPA describes the 2024/25 rise in service work as a partial rebound from two prolonged Hollywood strikes in 2023.

   Where the camera goes changes the incentive too. On top of the basic rates, the province offers regional and distant-location bonuses of 6 per cent each for live-action work in qualifying parts of B.C. The incentive structure itself recognizes that B.C. production isn’t only a Vancouver story. Call it a tax rule with a road trip built in.

   On the ground, permits are local. The City of Vancouver’s film office handles filming on city streets and property, while neighbouring municipalities such as the City of North Vancouver issue their own. Cross a city line, and the paperwork changes.

3. Animation and VFX

   Example: KPop Demon Hunters (2025), animated in Vancouver and Montreal

   Some of B.C.’s screen work never goes near a location. Animation studios build characters and worlds from scratch. Visual effects houses extend sets, create creatures and environments, and blend digital elements with live-action footage. Post-production, from picture editing to colour and sound, finishes the film. That work can happen here even when the live-action scenes were shot elsewhere, or when there weren’t any. Nobody has to close a street for a creature that doesn’t exist.

   The province backs this work with a separate 16 per cent credit for digital animation, visual effects and post-production, known as DAVE. A production can add it to either Film Incentive BC or the Production Services Tax Credit, as long as it qualifies for the basic credit first.

   International companies have built substantial operations here. Industrial Light & Magic opened a temporary Vancouver office in 2011 and a permanent studio in Gastown in 2014. Sony Pictures Imageworks announced in May 2014 that it was moving its head office from Culver City, California, to Vancouver.

   So a film can be partly made in Vancouver without a single frame being shot here. KPop Demon Hunters (2025), directed by Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans and produced by Sony Pictures Animation, was animated by Imageworks at its Vancouver and Montreal studios. Calling it a “Vancouver film” overstates the case. Calling it unconnected to Vancouver is just as wrong. It’s complicated, which, you may have noticed, is the theme of this guide.

4. Why credits matter

   Canadian content: at least six of ten CAVCO points

   Credits are where these distinctions go public, and three phrases do most of the work. “Filmed in” is a claim about principal photography: where the cameras rolled. “Produced in” is looser. It can mean where the production company is based, where the money was spent or where post-production happened. “Canadian content” isn’t a description at all. It’s a certification.

   Under the federal system, a live-action production must earn at least six of a possible ten points for Canadian key creative personnel. The director and screenwriter are worth two points each. The two lead performers, the director of photography, art director, composer and picture editor are worth one each. Yes, it’s a points system. Canadian content is basically a game show with more paperwork. The Canada Media Fund sums up the core requirement as a Canadian director or screenwriter plus at least one of the two lead performers, and Telefilm Canada and the Fund use the same scale. A studio feature with an American director, writer and leads can’t meet that test, however many British Columbians worked on it.

   The credits also map a production’s place in the local economy: workers and suppliers well beyond the recognizable actors. That long scroll of local names, from carpenters and drivers to accountants and artists, is the B.C. labour the tax credits are built around. The stars sell the ticket. The scroll is what the credit counts.

5. How to verify a claim

   Each source answers a different question

   Most “made in Vancouver” claims can be checked in a few steps. Start with Creative BC, the provincial agency that houses the B.C. Film Commission and administers both provincial tax credits. It publishes annual production statistics, sector information and a list of projects currently in production. Two cautions: its statistics count the whole province, and since 2021/22 it has recorded production in the fiscal year in which principal photography or key animation started, so totals from before and after that change aren’t directly comparable. Statistics have continuity problems too.

   Next, the end credits. Look for a B.C. production services company, a local crew list and any acknowledgement of Canadian or provincial support. If they’re missing, keep looking. Studio and vendor announcements fill the gaps. Animation and visual effects houses list their projects, as Imageworks does for KPop Demon Hunters, and trade outlets such as Playback, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter report production starts and studio deals. IMDb’s filming-location pages are a reasonable place to start, but never the only source. Trust, but verify. Mostly verify.

   Finally, match the evidence to the claim. A city permit answers a narrower question than a provincial credit: it shows filming in one municipality, not where a film was developed, animated or finished. A CAVCO certification answers a different question again: whether a production is Canadian, wherever it was shot.

What the label covers

Shot in British Columbia doesn’t mean shot in Vancouver. A production that used Vancouver workers or visual effects may have filmed somewhere else too. A film made by hundreds of British Columbians may still not be Canadian, and a certified Canadian film may have been shot in another province. Keeping those categories straight is basic industry reporting.

That’s why this publication’s research editions use the narrow phrase that fits the evidence: filmed in, animated in, produced by or certified as Canadian. Each phrase points to a different record, and each record can be checked. The nickname gets people talking. The records tell you what actually happened.

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