New show on mobster John Gotti filmed at Hamilton locales for Netflix
The Ontario film industry is not expecting any slowdown in demand for streaming content due to belt-tightening by services like Netflix.
The Hollywood Reporter says the province is projecting adding nearly 2.5 million square feet of studio space to an existing 3.7 million square feet of sound stages and other production spaces over the next four years.
A new film studio opened in Hamilton's north end in 2021. Film production is also growing in northern Ontario, in such communities as Sudbury and North Bay.
Hollywood studios are expected to continue to focus on Ontario due to generous currency and tax credit savings.
A documentary/docudrama on mobster John Gotti for Netflix - tentatively titled Get Gotti" - was filming in Hamilton last week. Gotti was the boss of the Gambino crime family - once the most powerful mob family in the U.S. - and it took the FBI nearly a decade to convict him and send him to jail in 1991.
There's a little bit more caution in the air, with what Netflix has gone through for the streamers, a little more discretionary spending, but it's not widespread in terms of deep cuts in production," Rick Perotto, vice-president, business development at William F. White International, a soundstage and production equipment supplier, told The Reporter in a Sept. 12 story. Trucks from William White are often seen in the city.
Netflix recently posted its first subscriber losses and slower revenue growth. The video streaming giant said it would be pulling back on spend growth across both content and non-content spend." This was followed by layoffs and cancellations at HBO Max, which has shot scenes for its superhero show Titans" in Hamilton. Shows for Apple TV Plus, Hulu and Paramount Plus have also filmed in the city.
Karen Thorne-Stone, president and CEO of Ontario Creates, which markets the province in Los Angeles, says the Ontario industry is taking the current streaming business disruption in stride.
Change and evolution in this industry is a constant," she told The Reporter.
She also notes the tax incentives that are competitive and improving, and because we're being responsive and nimble."
To future-proof the provincial industry, Ontario Creates is spearheading increased training and hiring of production crews and behind-the-scenes talent. Get Gotti" shot at the Trocadero Restaurant on Barton Street East, An actor could be seen outside the business dressed in what could be best described as a yellow summertime leisure suit from the 1960s.
The program also filmed at the Germania Club, The Bridge House, at an old apartment building on King Street East, near Holton Avenue North, and at a home on Winston Avenue, near Main Street West, in west Hamilton.
It reportedly will recreate scenes in the Gotti story and interview police officers and others. It is expected to stream on Netflix in 2023.
Gotti was acquitted in three trials in the 1980s. It was later learned the trials were tainted by jury tampering. Gotti died in prison at age 61 in 2002.
The Hamilton-based sitcom Pink Is In" was back filming its third season in Dundas.
The show about the dysfunctional Chatsworth Hamilton Women's Prison filmed last week at the Hamilton Film Studios/Studio B on Hatt Street. The goofy nature of the show was on full display - it was filming an episode about the first prison variety show.
The show runs on Bell Fibe TV 1 and focuses on the antics that besiege prison warden Morgan Dungworth (Ellen-Ray Hennessy). It also features Patrick McKenna as a prison warden from Eastern Europe and Jayne Eastwood as Dungworth's mother.
If you thought you saw snow last week on Bowman Street in west Hamilton, you weren't wrong.
The snow - fake obviously - was laid out at the Irving Zucker College for Jewish Studies at 235 Bowman St. for The Art of Christmas." The film is described as a romance drama and is likely destined for the Hallmark Channel or the Lifetime Channel.
Daniel Nolan is a freelance writer who writes about film for The Hamilton Spectator. He can be reached at dannolanwrites@gmail.com