Hollywood Film Ditches Canada for Italy
TORONTO – When Ridley Scott decided to shoot his new movie The Dog Stars in Italy instead of Canada, he wasn’t just looking for better scenery – he was looking for a better dinner. The legendary filmmaker famously abandoned his plans to shoot in Calgary after a terrible location-scouting meal, declaring that northern Italy had safer mountains, great landscapes, and vastly superior food.
This simple decision sparked a massive wave of internet buzz, with Hollywood’s biggest stars now gushing over what it is truly like to work in Italy. The production highlights a growing trend of top-tier talent choosing real-world locations over green-screen studios.
By completely bypassing their original filming plans in Calgary, Canada, Scott and his team have proved that Hollywood’s most brilliant artists are willing to go well out of their way to push the boundaries of their artform in Italy. The genius of this production lies in its uncompromising creative direction, a trademark of Scott, who remains undeniably one of his generation’s most influential directors.
When looking to capture a bleak, near-future American landscape, Canada seemed the logical choice. Yet Scott rerouted the entire production across the Atlantic after a disastrous location-scouting dinner. “You don’t want to eat a shrimp cocktail in Canada…so we’re shooting in Italy”, remarked Scott in an interview.
The cast’s subsequent anecdotes are currently circulating the internet, with actors openly gushing about the unique, tight-knit bonding experience of the shoot. Rather than retreating to luxury resorts, the cast lived together in tiny provincial hotels nestled in the mountains of Veneto and Abruzzo.
Jacob Elordi, firmly cemented in the absolute top tier of young Hollywood leading men, heavily praised the power of these practical environments. For Elordi, standing in the raw emptiness of the Italian wilderness made the film’s desperation feel completely “immediate and real”.
Elordi’s co-star Josh Brolin was incredibly vocal about his love for the country, emphatically stating that he would willingly shoot absolutely “anything in Italy”. He gushed that the natural alpine landscapes and vast mountain ranges were so profoundly beautiful that looking at the raw footage felt exactly like watching a National Geographic nature documentary. More than just the aesthetics, Brolin felt an immediate cultural kinship with the local community, explaining that he naturally understood their passion: “I understand an 87-year-old grandmother in Italy way better than I understand people in the town that I grew up in”.
Yet, while Hollywood’s elite are actively migrating to Italy to utilize over 400 local technicians and transform Rome’s rationalist EUR district into a ruined American city center, a stark domestic parallel is unfolding.
Over the last two years, Italy’s culture ministry has been aggressively introducing fresh tax incentives to encourage domestic storytellers to shoot actual Italian stories at home. It is a fascinating juxtaposition: foreign masters treating the Italian landscape as the ultimate canvas for global art, while local institutions struggle to keep domestic narratives rooted in their own soil.
Images courtesy of 20th Century Studios
Massimo Volpe is a filmmaker and freelance writer from Toronto: he writes reviews of Italian films/content on Netflix
