Montreal and Toronto are both pointing to the potential Screen Actors Guild strike to explain why mega-soundstages such as Montreal's Mel's Cité du Cinéma and Toronto's Filmport are basically idle during what is typically the summer service shooting bonanza. However, Vancouver has several big-budget American features shooting over the next few months, including 20th Century Fox's Night at the Museum 2 (starring Ben Stiller), which is currently in production through to September.

Prep is also underway in Vancouver on Warner Bros.' Cats & Dogs 2 and Sony Pictures' $250-million Farewell Atlantis (also known as 2012), directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) and starring John Cusack and Amanda Peet. It was initially headed for a Montreal shoot.

"Vancouver is busy and Calgary is fairly busy [with domestic product], but the rest of the country is disastrously slow," says Paul Bronfman, head of Comweb Group, which counts among its service divisions equipment supplier William F. White International. "I have never seen it this quiet in Toronto."

As for why Hollywood is still heading to Vancouver and not Toronto and Montreal this summer, Doug Barrett, president of PS Production Services, suggests that more than the actor labor unrest is at play.

"There are firm bookings from Hollywood for Vancouver for the fall, but not in Toronto, and you can't blame that on the [threat of a] SAG strike," he says. "We are seeing a growing separation between Toronto and Vancouver in terms of location work."

Barrett suggests that Vancouver is maintaining an advantage due to its proximity to L.A. (and sharing a time zone with Hollywood), not to mention B.C.'s larger number of purpose-built studios.

Vancouver's production levels are consistent with summer 2007, according to B.C. film commissioner Susan Croome. The only exception is TV series work, which is down from 19 American and Canadian series shooting at the beginning of July 2007 to 13 series in July 2008.

TV series shooting in Vancouver this summer include NBC/Universal's Battlestar Galactica and Eureka, USA Network's Psych, ABC Family's Kyle XY, Showtime's The L Word, Sci-Fi Channel's Stargate Atlantis, The Movie Network and Movie Central's Sanctuary, The CW's Smallville and Supernatural, and Global's The Guard.

Elsewhere, Nova Scotia is back on the service shoot radar this summer.

In Halifax, the $19-million miniseries The Sea Wolf for German broadcaster ZDF, starring Neve Campbell, Sebastian Koch, Stephen Campbell Moore and Tim Roth, is currently shooting with local production company Big Motion Pictures. And location filming on Amelia, coproduced by Toronto's Don Carmody, just wrapped in the east as well. Finally, another installment in CBS' Jesse Stone TV movie franchise (starring Tom Selleck) is slated to shoot in Nova Scotia later this summer.

Nonetheless, Hollywood honchos are telling Toronto and Montreal brass that things should look up once the SAG contract situation is resolved.