A TV series for major American network NBCUniversal is being filmed in Saint John, in partnership with an Ontario-based production company.
Saint John production company Hemmings Films and Blue Ice Pictures are in the second week of production for Revival, a zombie drama series slated to air on the American Syfy cable TV channel.
Producer Evan Ottoni told Information Morning Saint John the series is based on a graphic novel series from Image Comics, written by Tim Seely and Mike Norton.
“It’s a story about a rural town in Wisconsin where the dead suddenly start rising,” Ottoni said.
“It really departs from your prototypical zombie story in many interesting and fun ways…. It’s really the backdrop for a murder mystery that happens in the town.”
Greg Hemmings, executive producer of the series and founder of Hemmings Films, said he’s been trying to bring a show of this scale to the city for some time.
He and his partner Steve Foster met a team member from Blue Ice Pictures three years ago when they were visiting family in Saint John.
“We understood what scale of production this company has been involved with, including a lot of productions they bring to St. John’s, Newfoundland, and really building that film industry,” said Hemmings.
He said since that initial meeting, he and Foster have been working with the provincial government to garner enough funding to make a project with Blue Ice work.
“After a fair bit of back and forth with Blue Ice, we found the right project,” said Hemmings.
Saint John filmmaker Greg Hemmings said this project is helping to bring the New Brunswick film industry back to the scale it was at in the 1990s and he wants to see it grow further from here. (Submitted by Greg Hemmings)
He said there are many great filming locations in New Brunswick that can portray different places around the world, especially in the United States.
“Obviously we’ve got a dream to showcase New Brunswick as New Brunswick in some of these projects, but most American network television shows want to showcase America for America and that’s fine,” he said.
“We have the rural backdrop, we’ve got the urban centre for locations… this place actually works for this fictional happening in Wausau, Wisconsin.”
Hemmings said casting agents for the show were in Toronto, Moncton and Saint John.
Ottoni said the cast and crew is entirely Canadian.
“We’ve found a lot of homegrown talent here that are stepping out in front of the camera, some for the first time,” he said. “Saint John is basically a cookie-cutter copy of my hometown of Hamilton, Ont., and I mean that in the most loving way.”
Revival is in its second week of production, which will continue until December.
“It’s a really interesting and intense schedule, between 12- and 14-hour shoot days… there’s a resilience required to be a crew on one of these types of projects,” said Hemmings.
He said the project has been a sort of “wake-up call” for local crews who haven’t been able to work on projects of this scale since the 90s. But he’s optimistic about the local film industry moving forward now that it’s receiving support from the provincial government.
“We want to bring ourselves forward into a brand new version of what this industry can be. We have a vision for it, we have political will… we’re all looking at this as a pilot project,” said Hemmings.
In a statement to CBC News, Samantha Levine, vice-president of production for Blue Ice Pictures and executive producer on Revival, said the production company is always looking to “create new partnerships with untapped talent across the country.”
“New Brunswick has the potential to become a new Atlantic production hub and we are proud to invest in its growth. Being the first show of this size in the province comes with challenges, but … it became clear that the beauty of New Brunswick and all it has to offer would serve this show well,” she said.