SUPER-STUDIO NO INDUSTRY

Some progress is being made with Toronto's new 'super-studio' complex. Building is happening down somewhere on the waterfront after years of promises to give the city what it needs to attract the big shows -- films with big budgets that require a few sound stages at once. Toronto's big problem in the studio department is that it has never had a big studio complex with all the fixin's. Cinevillage was a sort of half-hearted attempt to fill this need but even with some studios added to the group over the years it never has become a real 'studio city'. Even though I have agreed with the notion that Toronto was lacking its own Elstree, the problem is, now especially, there is no real need for it. The Canadian dollar is powerful, effectively nullifying the big attraction for American producers; that is the traditional weakness of the Canadian dollar compared to our neighbour's which translated to X-amount of extra cash added to a movie's budget due to this relative difference in the two currencies... it was an extra 35 cents to each dollar or more for some time. That was a very palpable excuse to be a 'runaway production'. And now there are a lot more places in the world to 'runaway to'. Other districts are not about to sit idle and not want in on the green-stuff. The other problem, and it's a bigger one in my book, is that Toronto does not have a 'film industry'. You cannot depend on foreign productions to utilize a big studio to the point where it is profitable. The investors are in it for the money, which is no surprise. Studio or sound-stage rentals is big income for the owners of such a complex. You must have occupancy. Here in Toronto there is no industry, so there is no line-up of productions looking for expensive stage space. The math is easy; the reality, sobering.