Shazam! location filming boosted Toronto

New Line Cinema produced the movie as part of the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) franchise, which also included the recent Aquaman.

Toronto stood in for Philadelphia story settings in Shazam! and director David F Sandberg and his production team used Pinewood Toronto Studios as their base of operations.

The film also shot around Toronto, spending around C$1.2m on location fees, according to figures from Motion Picture Association Canada. Overall, Sandberg’s team fed C$55m into Ontario’s economy.

Ontario is still one of Canada’s main production hubs. In the 2017-18 financial year, international features spent C$121m on features in the province, while international TV spending reached C$655m.

High-profile productions shot locally over the past year have included horror follow-up It: Chapter Two, In the Tall Grass and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which is co-written and produced by Guillermo del Toro.

In Canada as a whole, international production rose by 26% in 2017-18, according to a report from the Canadian Media Producers Association.

British Columbia saw the highest spending figure from foreign shoots – a little over C$3bn – but Quebec in fact had the largest increase, at 65% on the previous year. Montreal has been a long-term base for the X-Men movie franchise and has also recently hosted Amazon’s Jack Ryan TV drama, while being renowned for its visual effects industry.

The next entry in the DCEU will be Birds of Prey, a movie shooting in California that will build on the popularity of anti-hero Harley Quinn, as played by Margot Robbie in Suicide Squad. That will be followed by Wonder Woman 1984, which has been filming on location around the world.

See KFTV's production guide for more on filming in Ontario.

Images: Warner Bros