![]() He’s directed three other holiday movies before-two for Lifetime and one for Netflix-and has The Most Colorful Time of the Year (in which a colourblind elementary school teacher falls in love with an optometrist who “brings colour into his life” just in time for Christmas) in this year’s holiday rotation along with Noel Next Door. “You name the vibe and we have it.”į or McGuire, getting to open the holiday season is no small deal. ![]() “Foreign productions here can get urban cityscapes, rolling prairies, forests, mountains, charming small towns,” she says. Emilia King, assistant professor at Ontario Tech University and co-founder of Pink Moon Studio, says the country’s “diverse landscapes,” some of which feature mild weather, make it a shoo-in for Hallmark’s specific brand of stories. In other words, “we can fly someone from Ottawa to Toronto and then on to Los Angeles relatively easily.” And, he adds, several of these Canadian settings tend to offer an “ideal romantic” backdrop. There are many advantages, he says, including affordable shooting locations and a proximity to good transport networks with international links. Jesse Prupas, senior vice president of scripted content at the Montreal-based production company Muse Entertainment, is producing two movies for Hallmark this year, which often take him and his team to Victoria and Ottawa. Ironically, the Hallmark network isn’t available in Canada, but Countdown to Christmas (its annual holiday movie franchise) is picked up by specialty channel W Network each year, lest we miss out on the corny festivities. Just over half of holiday productions are shot in Canada, and go-to shooting locations range from Kelowna, British Columbia, to Selkirk, Manitoba. In addition, over 95 percent of the company’s stable of directors are Canadian. In 2022, seventy-three original Hallmark films were shot in Canada (about half of them Christmas themed), as well as two new original series, Ride and The Way Home, and the returning series When Calls the Heart. In other words, one of the most successful networks on television today may be selling American family values, but the movies wouldn’t be what they are without their quintessentially Canadian settings, crews, and creatives. This year alone, sixteen Christmas movies were shot in Ottawa (where the tourism office has a map of Hallmark destinations), marking a local record. It’s directed by Maxwell McGuire, who shot the movie in his hometown of Ottawa. ![]() For instance, that plot above, about the single mom and the grinchy neighbour? That’s the story of Noel Next Door, the movie leading Hallmark’s annual slate of holiday movies. They also tend to be directed, produced, written by, and starring Canadians. But perhaps what’s most familiar is not the near-identical characters or well-worn enemies-to-lovers plot but the filming locations, which more often than not are flurry-friendly small Canadian towns. If any of those narrative elements sound familiar, then you’ve probably watched one if not ten Hallmark holiday movies.
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