Vancouver Screen Scene: From Helen Hunt and Thandie Newton to the Romeo Section

This week’s roundup of Vancouver-shot productions takes a turn for the darker, the mysterious, and the gritty.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t be inspirational.

Such is the case with the new film that’s bringing Oscar-winning Helen Hunt to town.

Hunt will star in the sports drama Live Like Line. The film follows the true story of an Iowa high school girls’ volleyball team who struggle to continue on after the tragic death of their star player Caroline “Line” Found, who died in 2011 moped accident.

Hunt plays their coach, Kathy Bresnahan, who helps them fight an uphill battle to get to the state championship.

The film will be directed by Sean McNamara, who Hunt previously worked with on the similarly inspirational 2011 film Soul Surfer, about teen professional surfer Bethany Hamilton who struggled to return to the waters after losing her arm in a shark attack.

Live Like Line starts shooting on August 2 and wraps up by September 13.

Turning to the world of fantasy, The Magicians is ready to cast its spell over the city when it starts filming its second season on June 27, and continuing until November 10.

The TV series is based on Lev Grossman’s novel and stars Jason Ralph as Quentin Coldwater, a student enrolled at the secretive Brakebills University where he is learning to become a magician.

But it’s not all fun and games in the world of magic.

Quentin stumbles across a troubling discovery when he finds that the magical world from his childhood books are actually true—and that it poses a threat to humanity. Yikes!

On even darker note, the live-action screen adaptation of the Japanese manga series Death Note, directed by William Adam Wingard, is scheduled to shoot from June 30 until August 30.

Actor and musician Nat Wolff (Paper Towns) plays the lead as student who discovers a supernatural notebook that has the power to kill anyone whose name is written in it. When the body count begins to rise, a detective is soon on the student’s trail.

Back in reality (well, reality-based drama), the CBC series The Romeo Section will start production soon, filming from July 4 to October 12 for its second season.

The Canadian spy thriller series, created by Chris Haddock (Da Vinci’s Inquest, Intelligence), is one of the few productions in which Vancouver gets a chance to play itself.

Andrew Airlie stars as Professor Wolfgang McGee, a spymaster and academic who manages a number of informants involved in intimate relationships with intelligence targets.

The cast includes Jemmy Chen as Lily Song and Juan Riedinger as Rufus Decker.

Elsewhere in the city, Vancouver gets grittier—and plays American cities—in the police drama TV series Rogue.

The Canadian-British production starts shooting Season 4 on July 18 and continues until October 19.

The series stars Thandie Newton as an undercover cop who seeks to bring down the people involved in the murder of her son, which leads her to finding a connection between the worlds of Chicago gangs and white-collar boardrooms.

Well, that’s all for this round of screen production news but stay tuned as there’s always more in store.