10 famous movies filmed in Vancouver and nearby

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

Vancouver works a lot in the movies. It just rarely gets to play itself. Below, it plays San Francisco, a small New England town, a high-rise in Nigeria and an unnamed comic-book city. Range. Each entry follows the role: the streets, studios and campuses that did the work, the city and the B.C. screen industry at the time, what Hollywood was chasing that year, and where the lead stood in life and career.

Each film is widely known and has a documented link to Vancouver or a nearby municipality, such as a named street, studio, campus or landmark. That doesn’t mean every scene was shot downtown: several also filmed in Alberta, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Australia or on Vancouver Island, as noted. Industry figures are province-wide unless stated otherwise.

1. Deadpool (2016)

   2016 · Directed by Tim Miller · Georgia Viaduct, downtown Vancouver

   Ryan Reynolds plays Wade Wilson, the mercenary who becomes Deadpool, in a film that took years to get made. Around 2012, Tim Miller’s visual effects company, Blur Studio, made a short computer-generated test reel of a live-action Deadpool. 20th Century Fox wasn’t persuaded, and the reel sat on a shelf until it leaked online around Comic-Con in 2014. The fan response won Fox over, and it green-lit an R-rated feature. The leaker? As Reynolds later admitted at a Toronto International Film Festival Q&A, it was Reynolds.

   It was Miller’s first feature as director, a tentpole debut at 50, as The Hollywood Reporter noted. It opened in February 2016 to about $132 million in the United States and Canada, breaking The Matrix Reloaded’s R-rated opening record and setting a February high. That December it earned Golden Globe nominations for best motion picture, musical or comedy, and for Reynolds as best actor.

   Vancouver in 2016

   The film shot in spring 2015, and its big set piece is pure Vancouver. A notice to residents gave the production April 5 to 16 on the Georgia Viaduct for a vehicle chase with fight stunts; the viaduct closed for about two weeks, and traffic was heavy. Rogers Arena and BC Place, right beside it, were digitally replaced with high-rises. Nothing to see here, sports fans. The mayor visited on the final shooting day and is thanked in the end credits. Arch Alley, between Abbott and Cambie streets in front of Victory Square, became the alley where Vanessa is kidnapped, shot at night under rain towers around April 1, 2015. Her apartment’s exterior is 529 Gore Avenue in Chinatown.

   The province’s industry was climbing: Creative BC figures for the 2016–17 fiscal year counted 338 tax-credit certifications and an estimated $2.6 billion in budgeted spending, up from 297 and $1.9 billion the year before. More than 85 per cent came from U.S.-based productions, and a low Canadian dollar was cited as part of the draw.

   Hollywood in 2016

   Deadpool’s opening started an argument: what had it proved? Some studios heard “R rating.” Fox was soon reported to be considering one for what appeared to be Hugh Jackman’s final Wolverine film, and Warner Bros. announced an R-rated extended cut of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice for home video. The writers, Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, heard creative risk, which sometimes means an R rating and sometimes doesn’t. When Logan opened in March 2017 to $85.3 million, Fox’s distribution chief called the two films a pair, one comedy and one drama, linked mainly by comic-book origins and an R rating.

   Reynolds in 2016

   Reynolds was shooting in his hometown. Born in Vancouver on October 23, 1976, he finished at Kitsilano Secondary in 1994 and got his professional start in 1991 on the Canadian teen series Hillside, according to The Canadian Encyclopedia. He came to Deadpool off a public setback: Green Lantern (2011) opened at No. 1 but below Thor and X-Men: First Class, and Warner Bros. later dropped sequel plans. He met his wife, Blake Lively, on that film. Their second daughter was born in fall 2016, and Reynolds later said he was changing a diaper when he heard about his Golden Globe nomination.

   Why it matters

   Painted-out stadiums don’t fool anyone who lives here: that’s the Georgia Viaduct. A Vancouver-born star’s long-shot project staged its biggest set piece on a Vancouver landmark, and the R-rated gamble became an industry argument. The city was in disguise. It still looked like home.

2. Deadpool 2 (2018)

   2018 · Directed by David Leitch · Riverview Lands, Coquitlam

   The sequel lost its director before it started: Tim Miller left in October 2016 over creative differences with Reynolds, and David Leitch took over. Reynolds shares the screenplay credit with Reese and Wernick, his first as a writer; the ampersand means they wrote it together. In screen credits, even the punctuation has a job. It opened in the United States on May 18, 2018.

   Vancouver in 2017 and 2018

   Filming returned in summer 2017 under the working title Caribbean Blue. CTV News reported production notices from TCF Vancouver Productions for a night shoot at 1090 West Pender Street, the alley behind The Cambie and Pub 340, and a rooftop at 314 West Cordova Street. In Coquitlam, the East Lawn Building on the former Riverview Hospital grounds became the Essex House for Mutant Rehabilitation, the film’s orphanage for troubled young mutants, according to the Tri-City News.

   The shoot is also remembered for a death. On August 14, 2017, stunt performer Joi “SJ” Harris, a professional motorcycle racer from Brooklyn doubling for Zazie Beetz, lost control of a motorcycle near Jack Poole Plaza and crashed into a building. WorkSafeBC’s 2019 investigation report identified failures including no risk assessment, no new-worker orientation, missing barriers at the edge of the set, and an instruction not to wear a helmet during the stunt. Fox said it disputed some aspects of the report and had revised its on-set safety standards.

   It was a record year for the province. Creative BC reported in July 2018 that 452 productions qualifying for tax credit certification in the 2017–18 fiscal year carried $3.4 billion in budgeted spending, 31.2 per cent above the previous record, $3.04 billion of it from foreign productions. That came despite a 2016 cut to B.C.’s basic production services tax credit, from 33 to 28 per cent.

   Hollywood in 2018

   The ground under the franchise was moving. In December 2017, Disney agreed to buy 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets in a deal reported at $52.4 billion that would bring Deadpool and the X-Men under Marvel Studios; chief executive Bob Iger said that month the Fox characters would come under the Marvel banner. So Deadpool 2 came out in limbo. Its writers said lawyers wouldn’t yet let the two sides talk, and Reynolds said Fox had him cut a joke about Disney.

   Reynolds in 2018

   Four years after leaking his own test reel, Reynolds was a producer and credited writer on his own franchise. His business interests were widening too: in February 2018 he took an ownership stake in Aviation Gin, a Portland, Oregon, brand. Back home, the North Shore News claimed him for the city, calling him “Vancouver’s Ryan Reynolds” in a review that noted the film was shot once again in and around Vancouver.

   Why it matters

   Deadpool 2 shows the full weight of a Vancouver blockbuster shoot in a record year: downtown alleys and rooftops, a heritage hospital campus in Coquitlam, and a Disney–Fox deal still being worked out over its hero’s head. It also shows the cost. SJ Harris died during a stunt near Jack Poole Plaza, and WorkSafeBC investigated. Record years are counted in dollars. They’re carried by people.

3. Godzilla (2014)

   2014 · Directed by Gareth Edwards · Oceanic Plaza, West Hastings Street

   Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. made this reboot, released by Toho in Japan and by Warner everywhere else. Gareth Edwards got the job after his first feature, Monsters, drew attention. Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Ford Brody, a U.S. Navy bomb expert just reunited with his family in San Francisco when he’s pulled to Japan to help his estranged father (Bryan Cranston). It opened on May 16, 2014, to about $93.2 million in North America, the year’s second-biggest opening to that point after Captain America: The Winter Soldier, TheWrap reported, and reached about $529 million worldwide, according to The Numbers.

   Vancouver in 2013

   Principal photography began on March 18, 2013, at the Vancouver Convention Centre, as an airport terminal (Honolulu, in most accounts). Downtown streets became San Francisco’s financial district. Oceanic Plaza, the office tower at 1066 West Hastings Street, became a San Francisco BART station with kiosks, advertising, cabs and police cars, while a rain machine soaked Elizabeth Olsen through take after take. BC Place became a FEMA shelter, and part of Cypress Mountain a Bay Area park. San Francisco’s worst day had a lot of Vancouver in it.

   Finn Slough in Richmond became the boat approach into the film’s quarantine zone in Japan, and Steveston’s Moncton Street a war zone with wrecked cars and about 200 soldier extras. A 400-foot section of the Golden Gate Bridge was built as a set, and much of the studio work was done at the Canadian Motion Picture Park in Burnaby. After more than three months, the Vancouver shoot wrapped in late June 2013 and moved to Hawaii.

   The monster arrived at an anxious moment. That January, thousands of B.C. film workers had rallied at North Shore Studios under the Save BC Film banner, arguing that richer incentives in Ontario and Quebec were pulling work away. The province declined to add credits, and the group disbanded that October. The effects had a Vancouver line too: MPC’s Vancouver-based supervisor, Guillaume Rocheron, led roughly 350 shots across the company’s Vancouver, London and Bangalore studios, including Godzilla, the MUTO creatures and a digital San Francisco.

   Hollywood in 2014

   Godzilla was built to start something. After its success, Legendary moved Kong: Skull Island to Warner Bros. in September 2015 and the next month announced a film bringing Godzilla and Kong together, the shared universe later sold as the MonsterVerse. It was part of a wider studio push to copy Marvel’s connected films, alongside Universal’s monster plans and DC’s extended slate.

   Taylor-Johnson in 2014

   Taylor-Johnson met the director Sam Taylor-Wood making Nowhere Boy (2009); when they married in 2012, both took the surname Taylor-Johnson. Hold onto that name. The same year as Godzilla, he first appeared as Pietro Maximoff, Quicksilver, in a scene attached to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, ahead of Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). The only bigger opening of 2014 to that point carried his Marvel debut.

   Why it matters

   Godzilla treated the region as a kit of parts: an airport, a financial district, a stadium shelter, a fishing village and a mountain park, with a Vancouver effects team finishing the job. It started shooting weeks after local crews rallied for work. One monster movie can fill a lot of streets. It can’t settle an industry’s nerves.

4. Jumanji (1995)

   1995 · Directed by Joe Johnston · Bridge Studios, Burnaby

   Robin Williams plays Alan Parrish, trapped for 26 years inside a board game that looks harmless. The film opened on December 15, 1995. Its stampede and monkeys were digital, supervised by Industrial Light & Magic, which wrote custom tools for the animals’ facial expressions and for digital hair on the monkeys and a lion. Critics split. ReelViews’ James Berardinelli found some animals unconvincing on a big screen, and the Virginian-Pilot’s Mal Vincent saw plenty of spectacle but thin humour and plot, while an early Variety preview judged that ILM had gone beyond its Jurassic Park work.

   Vancouver in 1995

   The story is set in the fictional town of Brantford, played by Keene, New Hampshire: about nine minutes of the film show Keene’s Central Square and Main Street. Most of the rest was made in British Columbia. TCM’s catalogue dates the shoot from November 14, 1994, to April 7, 1995, and the Keene Sentinel puts the company in Vancouver for about four months, shooting all the interiors and one exterior, much of it at Bridge Studios in Burnaby. Even the Parrish mansion’s exterior was a temporary facade on a vacant lot in Vancouver. All front, no house.

   B.C.’s industry was growing fast. Playback reported a record $432 million in direct film-related spending in 1995, up 7 per cent, with $677 million in total production budgets across 95 productions. B.C. film commissioner Pete Mitchell said even officials were surprised, after concern the year before that big American features were dropping off. Television carried much of the load: The X-Files had been filming in the Vancouver area since March 1993, and Mitchell later told the Seattle Times the series “really put us on the map.”

   Hollywood in 1995

   Digital creatures were moving from novelty to selling point. ILM had already done the creature work for Jurassic Park. Jumanji asked for more: herds, fur and hair, and animals running through real streets.

   Williams in 1995

   Williams came to Jumanji after winning a Golden Globe for Mrs. Doubtfire (1993); The Birdcage, opposite Nathan Lane, followed in 1996, and his Academy Award came later, for Good Will Hunting. He had married Marsha Garces Williams in 1989; they had two children, born in 1989 and 1991, and divorced in 2010. Williams died in 2014.

   Why it matters

   Jumanji hides its seams: a New England town on the outside, Burnaby soundstages on the inside. It was made in a record year for B.C. spending, when one star-led family feature could sit alongside a fleet of television series. The town on screen is Brantford. Walk through any door, and you’re in B.C.

5. X2: X-Men United (2003)

   2003 · Directed by Bryan Singer · Vancouver Film Studios

   The sequel to X-Men (2000) brought back Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and the rest of Bryan Singer’s ensemble. It opened in the United States on May 2, 2003, with about $85.6 million from a then-record 3,741 theatres, then the fourth-biggest opening weekend on record, according to Box Office Mojo, and finished with about $407.7 million worldwide. Boxoffice Pro’s franchise retrospective rates it above the 2000 original with critics and audiences alike.

   Vancouver in 2003

   Filming ran from June 2002 into the autumn, mostly at Vancouver Film Studios. Xavier’s school was Hatley Castle, on the Royal Roads University grounds in Colwood near Victoria, where the crew shot exteriors and the billiard room, hallways and dining room, according to the Times Colonist. The Alkali Lake dam exteriors came from Barrier Lake in Alberta’s Kananaskis Country.

   The city’s biggest news that year had nothing to do with mutants. On July 2, 2003, in Prague, the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2010 Winter Games to Vancouver and Whistler, 56 votes to 53 over Pyeongchang. Vancouver residents had backed the bid in a February referendum, 64 per cent in favour.

   For the screen industry, 2003 was a peak with a cliff behind it. B.C. film and television production spending hit a record of about $1.4 billion, according to Playback, then fell 43 per cent to $801 million in 2004. B.C. cabinet minister Olga Ilich later called 2003 “our strongest year ever.”

   Hollywood in 2003

   X2’s record-wide release treated a comic-book sequel as a full summer event. It chased the same audience as The Matrix Reloaded, and a DVD Talk review that year argued that moviegoers chose the mutants over the more heavily promoted Matrix sequel. Box Office Mojo noted that its second weekend held up better than the first film’s and linked that staying power to a broader fan base.

   Jackman in 2003

   Wolverine had made Jackman a bankable action star after X-Men, in Britannica’s account. In 2003 he went the other way, making his Broadway debut as the singer-songwriter Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz, which won him the 2004 Tony Award for best actor in a musical. He hosted the Tony Awards three years running, from 2003 to 2005. Claws on screen, show tunes on stage.

   Why it matters

   X2 put Vancouver Film Studios at the centre of a franchise the same year the city won the Olympics. Its map is a lesson too. A castle near Victoria, a dam in Kananaskis, the rest on Vancouver stages: “filmed in Vancouver” often means a B.C. and Alberta production, pieced together here.

6. X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

   2006 · Directed by Brett Ratner · Vancouver Film Studios

   The third X-Men film changed hands before cameras rolled. Bryan Singer left to make Superman Returns, Matthew Vaughn came and went, and Brett Ratner, known for Rush Hour, took over with a release date to keep. Directors came and went. The date stayed put. Filming ran from August 2005 to January 2006. It opened on May 26, 2006, with an estimated $107 million over three days, which CBS News reported as the largest Memorial Day weekend opening to that point, ahead of The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

   Vancouver in 2005 and 2006

   Much of it was again made at Vancouver Film Studios, with location work in San Francisco and Hatley Castle back as the Xavier mansion. Then there was the bridge. Post Magazine’s production account describes a quarter-mile section of the Golden Gate Bridge on a 10-acre lot in Vancouver, with 50-foot green screens at each end so real and computer-generated cars and water could be combined.

   The shoot helped a comeback. After the 2004 slump, B.C. production spending rebounded to about $1.233 billion in 2005, more than $1 billion of it foreign, with foreign feature-film spending up 200 per cent to about $580 million, according to the province and Playback. The province’s 2005–06 annual report called B.C. North America’s third-largest service production centre, after Los Angeles and New York.

   At least one San Francisco critic noticed: a 2006 review in the San Francisco Bay Guardian faulted the film for setting so much of its story in San Francisco while shooting most of it in Vancouver.

   Hollywood in 2006

   The Memorial Day record was in dollars, not tickets: Rotten Tomatoes estimated that The Lost World sold about 20 million tickets over its record weekend, against roughly 19 million for The Last Stand. Its opening day of about $45 million still ranked second only to Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.

   Jackman in 2006

   The Last Stand opened a crowded year. Jackman played the magician Robert Angier opposite Christian Bale in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, a conquistador and a modern-day scientist in Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, and voiced Memphis, the father penguin, in George Miller’s Happy Feet. A mutant, a magician, a conquistador and a penguin in one year. He also formed Seed Productions that year with John Palermo and his wife, Deborra-lee Furness; the couple had adopted their second child in 2005.

   Why it matters

   The Last Stand is this list’s most literal case of building another city: a stretch of San Francisco’s most famous bridge, put up on a Vancouver lot and finished with effects. Vancouver didn’t just play San Francisco this time. It built part of it.

7. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

   2009 · Directed by Gavin Hood · Buchanan Tower, UBC campus

   20th Century Fox hired Gavin Hood to direct in July 2007, after his South African film Tsotsi won the Academy Award for best foreign language film. Hugh Jackman returns as Wolverine, and a familiar face turns up: Ryan Reynolds as Wade Wilson, a part first planned as a cameo and expanded during production. Reynolds has said he wrote his own lines for the character’s early scenes, before the film’s later version of Wade had his mouth sewn shut.

   Wolverine had a leak of its own. About a month before the May 1, 2009, release, an unfinished workprint turned up online, and Fox said the FBI and the MPAA were investigating. An uploader was arrested in December 2009 and later sentenced to a year in federal prison, but The Register reported that the original source of the leak was never identified. The film still opened at No. 1, with about $85 million in North America.

   Vancouver in 2008 and 2009

   This one was mostly made elsewhere. Principal photography ran from January to May 2008, based at Fox Studios in Sydney, with most of the film shot in Australia and New Zealand and Canada as an additional location. Vancouver’s part was small but identifiable: the exterior of Buchanan Tower, a 12-storey building at 1873 East Mall on the University of British Columbia campus, played a high-rise in Nigeria during the team’s raid, according to CTV News. The campus is a screen regular; CTV’s list of productions filmed there runs from Fifty Shades of Grey to Riverdale. The city itself was preparing for the 2010 Winter Games.

   The local industry had just had a hard year. B.C. production spending fell to $943 million in 2007, which the Georgia Straight tied to a strong Canadian dollar, the U.S. screenwriters’ strike and competition from other jurisdictions. Service work on foreign productions pushed it back above $1.2 billion in 2008 and to about $1.3 billion in 2009, even as B.C.-owned production fell about 40 per cent that year. TheWrap credited the February 2009 extension of B.C.’s film and television tax credits, and a retreat in the dollar, with reviving Vancouver’s production.

   Hollywood in 2009

   The leak made the film a test of what piracy could do to a blockbuster. The market researcher BigChampagne estimated the workprint was downloaded about 4.1 million times, yet studio estimates put the opening weekend at about $87 million including Thursday-night shows, which TheWrap reported as the biggest opening of 2009 to that point. The pirates got there first. The audience showed up anyway.

   Jackman in 2009

   Jackman had played Wolverine since X-Men (2000). In late 2008 he starred in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, and People magazine named him its Sexiest Man Alive. On February 22, 2009, about ten weeks before Wolverine opened, he hosted the 81st Academy Awards. He would carry the role through Logan (2017) and into Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).

   Why it matters

   Not every “filmed in Vancouver” credit makes a Vancouver film. Wolverine is mostly an Australian production with one Vancouver campus building. Its longest local thread may be the Vancouver-born actor it cast as Wade Wilson, who remade the character on Vancouver streets seven years later. The building got a cameo. The hometown actor got a franchise.

8. Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

   2015 · Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson · Vancouver as Seattle

   Universal Pictures and Focus Features adapted E. L. James’s bestselling novel for a reported $40 million, with Sam Taylor-Johnson directing. The casting was rocky. Charlie Hunnam left the role of Christian Grey about a month after he was announced, with the studios citing the limits his television schedule put on his preparation, and in late October 2013 Jamie Dornan, then known for Once Upon a Time and The Fall, was reported as his replacement. Dakota Johnson plays Anastasia Steele.

   Vancouver in 2013 and 2015

   Filming ran from early December 2013 to late February 2014 under the working title The Adventures of Max and Banks, with Vancouver as rainy Seattle. The locations read like a walking tour: the Gastown café Rainier Provisions, the Bentall 5 office tower, the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver for an elevator scene, the alley behind the Yaletown Roundhouse, a spot under the Main Street overpass near Burrard Iron Works, Oceanic Plaza (Godzilla’s BART station earlier that year), and Coal Harbour near the Westin Bayshore for a jogging scene. Claytons Hardware, where Ana works, was a storefront built in Ladner. Seattle’s real Escala tower supplied exterior establishing shots, and the penthouse interior was a set. Seattle played the outside of one building. Vancouver played Seattle. Reshoots returned to the Fairmont, Bentall 3 and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre on the UBC campus, and Vancouver’s tourism promoters later marketed the locations to visitors.

   By release, the industry had moved past the Save BC Film anxiety of 2013. Creative BC counted 297 tax-credit certifications and $1.9 billion in budgeted spending in the 2015–16 fiscal year, before the next year’s record of $2.6 billion.

   Hollywood in 2015

   The film opened over the Presidents’ Day weekend in February 2015 with about $94.4 million over four days, by Variety’s count, a holiday record Deadpool broke a year later. Was it also the biggest opening for a film directed by a woman? Depends who you ask. The Dissolve said yes, ahead of Twilight and Frozen; Variety ranked it second to The Matrix Reloaded, co-directed by Lana Wachowski, and noted that the comparison was itself debated. Either way, a modestly budgeted adaptation of a publishing phenomenon was one of the year’s early box-office events.

   Johnson in 2015

   Johnson, born in 1989 in Austin, Texas, to the actors Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith, had worked on screen since a childhood role in 1999. After high school came a small part in The Social Network (2010), then the lead in the Fox sitcom Ben and Kate, cancelled after one season. She won Anastasia over contenders including Felicity Jones, Elizabeth Olsen and Shailene Woodley, and the February 2015 release brought her international recognition.

   Why it matters

   Fifty Shades is a clean example of Vancouver as a neighbouring American city: the setting is Seattle, while the offices, alleys, hotel and campus are local. It also links two entries on this list. The director’s husband, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, had starred in Godzilla, shot in Vancouver earlier in 2013. That year the city played San Francisco in the spring and Seattle by winter, and used the same plaza for both.

9. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)

   2018 · Directed by Susan Johnson · Fort Langley and Point Grey

   Susan Johnson directed this adaptation of Jenny Han’s young adult novel, from a screenplay by Sofia Alvarez, for Awesomeness Films and Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment. Lana Condor plays Lara Jean Covey, and John Corbett her single father. It skipped cinemas and went straight to Netflix on August 17, 2018.

   Vancouver in 2017 and 2018

   The story is set in Portland, Oregon; the film was shot in and around Vancouver from early July to August 4, 2017. The Covey house, inside and out, is in Fort Langley, and Alder High School is Point Grey Secondary in Vancouver. The BCIT Aerospace Technology Campus in Richmond played Portland’s airport for the final scene, and a North Vancouver diner, the Corner Cafe, was used inside and out. Destination Vancouver later published an official itinerary of the film’s locations.

   It was shot the same summer as Deadpool 2, in the same record year: 452 productions and $3.4 billion in budgeted spending in the 2017–18 fiscal year, by Creative BC’s count. Series were the most common format shot in the province (164), ahead of movies of the week (112) and feature films (110).

   Hollywood in 2018

   The film was part of Netflix’s “Summer of Love,” a 2018 slate of original romantic comedies meant to revive a genre with little room at a box office dominated by franchise films. Netflix later told shareholders that more than 80 million accounts had watched at least one of them, singling this one out for strong repeat viewing; those are the company’s own figures. It arrived two days after Crazy Rich Asians opened in theatres, in a month NBC News called “Asian August” for its run of films with Asian American leads. Han had insisted on an Asian American actor for Lara Jean.

   Condor in 2018

   Condor was born in Cần Thơ, Vietnam, and adopted as an infant by American parents, growing up in Chicago and on Whidbey Island in Washington. Her first film was an X-Men movie too: she was cast as Jubilee in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) while still in her senior year of high school. But Lara Jean made her name, and earned her a Teen Choice Award nomination.

   Why it matters

   To All the Boys is the streaming era arriving on Vancouver’s streets: a teen romance made for Netflix rather than cinemas, with a Fort Langley house and a Point Grey school standing in for Portland. The postmark says Portland. The house is in Fort Langley.

10. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)

    2010 · Directed by David Slade · Shot primarily in Vancouver

    Three films, three directors. Summit Entertainment confirmed David Slade in April 2009. He was known for Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night, which had opened at No. 1, and he followed Chris Weitz, who had replaced Twilight’s Catherine Hardwicke for New Moon. Kristen Stewart returns as Bella Swan. The film opened on Wednesday, June 30, 2010, in a record 4,416 theatres, passing the 4,380 Iron Man 2 had set weeks earlier. Its midnight shows took about $30 million, a new midnight record ahead of New Moon, though its $68.5 million opening day fell short of New Moon’s $72.7 million.

    Vancouver in 2009 and 2010

    Summit announced in August 2009 that principal photography had begun in Vancouver, and the film was shot primarily in the city, with a few scenes in Portland. The move north was recent. The first Twilight was shot mostly in Oregon and Washington; producer Wyck Godfrey told The Globe and Mail that Oregon had won out for that film, but that by New Moon the currency had shifted and Canada was the better deal. The Globe framed the vampire sequels, fittingly, as an economic transfusion for Vancouver during the global recession.

    One franchise couldn’t hold up a whole industry, though: B.C. production spending fell from about $1.3 billion in 2009 to about $1.02 billion in 2010, Playback reported. That was also the year Vancouver and Whistler hosted the Winter Games they had won seven years earlier.

    Hollywood in 2010

    Eclipse was a showcase for the midnight launch, which CNBC described that summer as a new box-office strategy for big-budget films. Its record theatre count put a young-adult adaptation from Summit ahead of Marvel’s Iron Man 2 in reach. The vampires out-booked Iron Man.

    Stewart in 2010

    Stewart, born and raised in Los Angeles, first drew notice at about 12 as Jodie Foster’s daughter in David Fincher’s Panic Room (2002). In the year of Eclipse she was also Joan Jett, in Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways; she met Jett to prepare and prerecorded the songs, and Jett later said the performance made her proud. Stewart also received the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2010.

    Why it matters

    The Twilight sequels are a clear case of the exchange rate deciding where a franchise is made. Once the currency turned, the series came north, and Eclipse reached cinemas the year the city hosted the Olympics. The vampires didn’t care which side of the border they were on. The budget did.

What the list adds up to

A filming credit isn’t a setting credit. In these ten films Vancouver plays San Francisco twice, Seattle, Portland and a New England town from the inside, and only rarely, as on the Georgia Viaduct, looks like itself to the people who live here. Great career. Terrible name recognition. That knack for disappearing into someone else’s city is part of its industrial importance.

The production records also trace an industry growing up. In 1995, Playback counted a record $432 million in direct film-related spending in B.C.; in the 2017–18 fiscal year, Creative BC counted $3.4 billion in budgeted production spending. The two figures measure different things and shouldn’t be compared directly, but the scale of the change is clear. So are the pressures and the costs: a 2013 rally over incentives, and a 2017 stunt death that led to a WorkSafeBC investigation. On screen, the streets belong to other cities. The work, and the risk, stay here.

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