Hollywood’s Double Strikes Hit Film, TV Production in Canada Hard

Hollywood’s year of strikes in 2023 had a devastating impact on Canada’s film and TV production industry.

The latest annual economic report from the Canadian Media Producers Association, representing local indie producers, points to foreign location and service production in Canada plunging last year to $4.73 billion in overall expenditures for the year to March 31, 2024, down 26 percent from a year-earlier $6.65 billion in budgetary spending.

That left local soundstages dark, production crews idle and returned the level of Hollywood’s local production spend in Canada, which includes visual effects production, to pre-pandemic levels after last year’s labor disruption in Los Angeles and a sharp industry slowdown.

Last year, levels of TV production by the major studios and streamers were especially impacted as key players like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Apple TV+ shuttered local sets during the strikes. The number of foreign, mostly U.S. TV series shot in Canada last year fell to 220 in 2023-24 (which generated $2.99 billion in production spending), against a year-earlier 345 series.  

Recent U.S. series to shoot in Canada include the latest seasons of The Last of Us, Fargo and Reacher.

The Hollywood strikes had less of an impact on foreign feature film production in Canada due mainly to production-accounting methods that record the value of movie shoots from the first day of principal photography, not when they were paused. In addition, VFX work north of the border on Hollywood tentpoles continued last year without actors or writers.

The result was, as number of foreign feature films shot in Canada in the year to March 31, 2024 fell by 14.7 percent from 190 to 162, the total volume of production generated by those films fell in value only 4.9 percent from $1.6 billion to $1.52 billion.

The CMPA report cautioned the ripple effects of the dual Hollywood writers and actors strikes may be felt for years to come as an industry contraction and the end of the Peak TV era continues to depress production levels.

“While that (labor actions) caused a significant decrease in terms of production volume in 2023/24, their total impact may have been understated this year, and will instead carry forward to an extent as production information is provided and counted in subsequent years,” the report stated.

Post-strikes, the major studios and streamers have returned to Canada to shoot their film and TV originals, but have yet to reach pre-Los Angeles labor action levels in terms of overall expenditures. The total Canadian production volume fell by 19 percent last year to $9.58 billion, with local Canadian TV production sliding 13 percent to $3.25 billion, even as local feature film production remained stable.

The impact of the Hollywood labor actions north of the border is especially worrying for the Canadian industry as the level of local production for homegrown film and TV producers shrank in the latest fiscal year measured by the CMPA, leaving the local industry even more dependent on the ebbs and flows of foreign location shooting by Los Angeles producers.