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| Steven Spielberg |
PopGoesTheNews.com • Robots, nanobots and little blue creatures are heading to Montreal. Throw in one of the world's most famous magicians and you've got the makings of a blockbuster year of filmmaking in Canada's second-largest city.
Cameras will roll this summer on Steven Spielberg's Robopocalypse, a sci-fi flick about life on Earth following a robot uprising. Based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Daniel H. Wilson, the $100-million-plus movie focuses on an attack against mankind by machines known as Archos.
Production is scheduled for July to September at Mel's Cité du Cinema studio in Montreal. Robopocalypse will hit cinemas in early July 2013.
Spielberg has worked in "la belle province" before. He shot scenes for 2002's Catch Me If You Can starring Leonardo DiCaprio in Quebec City and made the 2004 Tom Hanks flick The Terminal inside Montreal's Mirabel airport.
(Spielberg is also executive producer of the made-in-Toronto series Falling Skies, the TNT series about humans coping with an invasion of robots from outer space.)
Also shooting in Montreal this year is The Smurfs 2, a sequel to last year's live action/CGI hit starring Hank Azaria and Neil Patrick Harris. It goes into production at the end of April and is scheduled to open in theatres in August 2013.
Director Roland Emmerich, who made part of the 2004 disaster flick The Day After Tomorrow in Montreal, is set to return to the city later this year to begin work on Singularity, a $125-million sci-fi film about a boy who received superpowers thanks to nanotechnology who's on the run from the corporation that developed the technology.
Sony Pictures is also considering Montreal as a base for its Houdini biopic directed by Francis Lawrence (Water for Elephants). It focuses on the famed escape artist as he sets out to expose a troubled spiritualist as a fraud only to become obsessed with her.
A number of movies have been made in Montreal in recent years, including 300, Source Code, Immortals and this year's highly anticipated Snow White flick Mirror Mirror starring Julia Roberts and Lily Collins.
