Filming in Vancouver: Lucy Hale, Ben Stiller, Workaholics, Chow Yun-Fat, Aaron Kwok, and more

In this week’s roundup of what’s shooting in Vancouver, there’s an emoji feature film coming our way, to be produced by some big names in comedy. But it’s not related to the one that’s in theatres now. And it’s a much more, er, sensitive subject.

And while some major Hong Kong stars graced us with their presence, a new U.S. TV series is coming to town to shoot its first season.

Curious what this is all about? Read on.

While The Emoji Movie hit theatres this past weekend, there’s another emoji movie being made. But it is clearly very, very different.

The Netflix comedy Eggplant Emoji, directed by Jake Szymanski (Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates), will shoot in town from August 21 to October 2.

Producers include Ben Stiller and the Workaholics gang—Blake Anderson, Adam Devine, Anders Holm, Kyle Newacheck—who were recently in Vancouver shooting the feature film Game Over, Man!

In this feature, even though it’s about teens, the subject matter is a little more—shall we say—adult than The Emoji Movie. With all those names on board as producers, you can probably sense where this is going.

And here it is: During a camping excursion, a teenager accidentally chops off his penis, leaving it up to his friends to save his appendage while they can.

Yikes! Keep your fingers—and legs—crossed that they manage to save the day.

With that out of the way, in other news, fans of Hong Kong stars may be sad that Project Gutenberg has left town. (The literal Chinese translation of the title is Unparalleled.)

The production was in Vancouver for the Canadian leg of its shoot from July 13 to July 31.

Directed by Felix Chong (Overheard), the Cantonese-language film follows a group of Hong Kong detectives on the trail of expert currency counterfeiters with an international operation.

When they extradite one of the gang members (Aaron Kwok) from Thailand, they find themselves in pursuit of the elusive gang leader (Chow Yun-Fat).

The cast includes Catherine Chau, Dick Liu Kai Chi, and Zhang Jingchu. In addition to Canada, other filming locations for the feature include Hong Kong and Thailand.

On the home-screen side of things, the new TV series Life Sentence will shoot its first season from August 9 to January 12 here.

In this comedy-drama series directed by John Kretchmer (iZombie), Stella Abbott, played by Lucy Hale (Pretty Little Liars), learns that she’s no longer dying of her terminal cancer.

As astounding as that news is, she now has to learn to live with all the decisions she made when she thought she was going to die.

The cast includes Elliot Knight, Dylan Walsh, Gillian Vigman, Jayson Blair, Brooke Lyons, and Carlos PenaVega.

Also coming our way in the near future, here are some brief notes about some other productions:

• Vancouver-based Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein will codirect the sci-fi feature film Freaks from July 31 to August 25

• the comedy-drama-crime-horror TV series iZombie will be back to shoot Season 4 from August 8 to January 18

That’s all for this week. But there’s plenty more on the horizon so check back in with us next week for the rundown on what’s shooting in Hollywood North.