You better not get in Liam Neeson’s way in Vancouver because he’s out for revenge in his new film Hard Powder.
In this week’s roundup of Vancouver-shot productions, we have a few new project announcements to go over. There’s a Holllywood revenge thriller, and three new TV pilots including a man-made disaster drama, a sci-fi refugee drama, and a female cop comedy.
Plus, there’s some news about a Brit actor, who was shooting in town, splitting up with his Australian pop star fiancée.
Intrigued? Read on.
First up is a feature film that’ll bring some more star wattage to town.
Hard Powder sees a Hollywood star get back in the saddle with a vengeful parent role once again.
Directed by Hans Petter Moland, it’s an adaptation of Moland’s Norwegian black-comedy action film In Order of Disappearance (Kraftidioten).
Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson, who starred in three Taken films about a father on a mission to rescue his kidnapped daughter, will play a snowplow driver in a Colorado ski town whose son is murdered by a local drug kingpin.
Driven to seek vengeance against the drug cartel, the father sparks a turf war between a Native American mafia boss and a vegan, Tesla-driving gangster named the Viking (now there’s something you don’t hear about every day).
Production commences on starts on March 20 and continues until May 24.
The rest of the cast is yet to be announced so stay tuned.
In the meantime, there are a lot of other projects to look forward to as well, as several pilots for TV series to be shot in Vancouver have been announced.
Dan Byrd will star in Doomsday.
Doomsday, set in the wake of 9/11, focuses on a secret U.S. government think tank that employs the most creative minds in science and entertainment to develop man-made disaster scenarios and how to resolve them.
Due to the dangerous content of the ideas, the program is eventually shut down. Yet years later, when a calamity occurs that’s straight out of the program, the team is brought back together to help stop the disasters from occurring.
The first cast member announced is Dan Byrd (Cougartown), who will play a professional analyst with a website that predicts politics, sports, and stocks.
The pilot will be shot from March 13 to 31.
Elizabeth Banks will produce The Trustee.
Mirroring Doomsday’s dates, another TV pilot will be also be shot from March 13 to 31.
The Trustee is a female cop buddy comedy about a headstrong detective who teams up with her precinct’s trustee, who is an ex-con finishing her prison sentence by doing tasks for the police department.
Despite their opposing views on the law, the two somehow manage to establish a successful partnership.
While the cast hasn’t been announced yet, Elizabeth Banks (Pitch Perfect) is the producer.
Meanwhile, a third TV pilot shot at the same time will be The Crossing.
This sci-fi story depicts the arrival of refugees from a war-torn country in an American town. The twist is, however, that the country that they’re fleeing from exists 250 years in the future.
The cast hasn’t been announced but the characters will include a local sheriff with a past, a federal agent, and a mother searching for her missing refugee daughter. To add to the intrigue, at the centre of it all is a conspiracy.
Starting one day after the other two pilots, The Crossing will be shot from March 14 to 31.
A scene from No Tomorrow shot at Vancouver’s False Creek.
Meanwhile in the rumour department, British tabloids are reporting that a Vancouver-shot TV series has been cancelled.
While the Britain’s The Sun says that an unnamed source stated that No Tomorrow will live up to its namesake and not have a future beyond its first season. However, the network has not confirmed or announced any cancellation yet.
Whether or not that’s true, the U.S.–based Deadline did report back in November that the CW decided to cap the series at 13 episodes instead of ordering more episodes. (Incidentally, the CW also decided to cap the Vancouver-shot series Frequency, which also was in its debut season, at 13 episodes as well.)
No Tomorrow followed a conservative quality-control assessor (Tori Anderson) who falls in love with a free-spirited man (Joshua Sasse) out to do everything on his bucket list because he believes the apocalypse is imminent.
Joshua Sasse
Ratings for the series did decline over the season, with less than half a million tuning in to watch the season finale broadcast on January 17.
Meanwhile, the Brit tabloids are all abuzz about the series’ star Sasse, who has split up with his fiancée, Australian pop star Kylie Minogue.
Australian pop star Kylie Minogue
Minogue announced their breakup on Instagram.
So sadly, by the looks of it, Vancouver will probably not be seeing either Sasse or Minogue (who we may have been lucky enough to have had come visit Sasse) in town for certain, unless they’re coming here for new projects.
What’s more, there’ll certainly be other projects as well on the horizon for star-spotters to get excited about so tune in next week when we give our weekly rundown of what’s shooting on the streets of Hollywood North.
