Neeson film shoot moves to B.C. after Banff block

A movie denied permission to film in Alberta’s mountain national parks is now on location in British Columbia.

“We have moved four to five days into B.C. for now,” said Mark Voyce, unit manager for the film Hard Powder.

Voyce said staff for the movie are looking for extras for several days of filming in Fernie and Cranbrook.

Hard Powder had originally applied to Parks Canada for permits to film in several parts of the Rocky Mountain national parks in Alberta, including Banff, the Lake Louise townsite and ski hill, and the Columbia Icefields.

Weeks before the crew was scheduled to begin filming, Parks Canada turned them down. A letter from the agency listed eight deficiencies in their application, although staff with the production company said most of those questions had been answered in the original application.

Parks Canada officials later acknowledged the film’s plot was a concern. Action star Liam Neeson is to play an honest snowplow driver whose son is murdered by a local drug kingpin. He then seeks to dismantle the cartel, but his efforts spark a turf war involving a First Nations gang boss, played by indigenous actor, musician and Order of Canada member Tom Jackson.

Parks Canada said concerns over the fact the gang leader was indigenous was “an important factor in the agency’s final decision.”

Jackson wrote a letter to Parks Canada saying he had been given the chance to vet the script and insisted it wasn’t disrespectful.

The movie’s producer Michael Shamberg said the crew planned to spend almost $5 million in Banff and Jasper over the course of the shoot.

Bill Evans, the head of the Alberta Media Production Industries Association, said he wasn’t aware of a similar situation occurring previously. He worried the Parks Canada decision could affect future film activity in the parks. “Funders are very risk averse so the potential for a production to get cancelled at the last minute is damaging.”

Parks Canada said it receives far more applications to shoot movies than it can accommodate. Decision on which productions can go ahead are made at the local level, a parks spokeswoman said.

Funders are very risk averse so the potential for a production to get cancelled at the last minute is damaging.