Vancouver Screen Scene: From Jake Gyllenhaal to Arnold Schwarzenegger

In this round of film and TV productions taking place in Vancouver, monstrous creatures and super-powered individuals dominate the spotlight, with big names coming to town.

First up, a warning: if you’re walking the streets of Vancouver and suddenly hear a bunch of shrieking girls (and a few guys), that may be because Jake Gyllenhaal is going to be in town to Vancouver to star in the Netflix sci-fi film Okja.

In the director’s chair will be South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, best known for blockbusters like Snowpiercer and The Host.

The story, set in New York City, follows a young girl named Mija (Seo-Hyeon Ahn) who tries to stop a multinational company from capturing a massive animal named Okja with whom she has bonded with.

The cast will also include Tilda Swinton, Byun Hee-bong, Paul Dano, Lily Collins, Steven Yeun, Yoon Je-moon, Choi Woo-shik, and Devon Bostick.

The production, which began in Seoul, will shoot in our city from July 31 to August 12.

Hunting down a creature of a more vicious sort is coming this way in the form of another production.

Writer-director Shane Black will shoot The Predator, a sequel reboot to the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film Predator, in Vancouver, starting on September 26 and wrapping up by December 20.

Details are minimal and the cast hasn’t been announced yet.

Predator has had two sequels, Predator 2 (1990) and Predators (2010), and two crossovers with the Alien franchise: Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Alien vs. Predator: Requiem (2007).

Will this new Predator reignite interest in the film franchise? We won’t find out until it hits the big screen February 9, 2018.

Speaking of Arnold Schwarzenegger, he’ll be in town to film the action-comedy Why We’re Killing Gunther.

Schwarzenegger will play the arrogant show-off Gunther, one of the world’s top hitmen who international assassins team up against to knock him off.

The cast will include Saturday Night Live alums Taran Killam and Bobby Moynihan, Vancouver’s Cobie Smulders (The Avengers), and Randall Park (Fresh Off the Boat).

Killam, who is married to Smulders, will not only star in the film but he’s the writer and director of the project.

Moving along to superpowered beings, another series will be joining the ever-growing collection of superhero series shot here, which includes Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and the recently arrived Supergirl.

In Legion, starring Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) stars as David Haller, the son of Charles Xavier, also known as Professor X and the founder of the mutant team X-Men.

Things get interesting and complicated as Haller is a powerful mutant who has dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personalities, with each personality possessing different powers.

Directed by Noah Hawley, shooting for Season 1 begins this summer and will be broadcast on FX in 2017.

Although that’s all for this installation, you can rest assured there’ll be more super-powered people, big monsters, and lions and tigers and bears in the near future to chat about so stay tuned.