Report: Columbia Pictures' 'Total Recall' Headed to Toronto

TORONTO -- Columbia Pictures’ Total Recall reboot appears headed to Toronto for a late March 2011 shoot.

The modern remake of the 1990 Arnold Schwarzennegar-starring sci-fi flick looks set to shoot in the city’s giant Pinewood Toronto Studios, the Toronto Star newspaper reported Thursday.

The booking follows Pinewood’s North American beach-head receiving a $34.5 million loan from the Ontario government to lure big budget movie and TV shoots to the city.

Len Wiseman will direct Total Recall based on a script by Kurt Wimmer, with Neal H. Moritz producing through his Original Film banner. The project, based on the Philip K. Dick story, portrays a man haunted by a recurring dream of rocketing to Mars. Total Recall is just the big budget Hollywood shoot that Ontario has been looking to draw to the city. Pinewood Toronto Studios has recently hosted movie shoots like Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, The Thing, and Dream House. But it’s the vfx-heavy studio projects like Total Recall that Ontario has been looking to draw away from Vancouver and Los Angeles, which have been in the hi-tech soundstage business for far longer than Toronto.

Pinewood Toronto Studios also unveiled Thursday a $34.5-million repayable loan from Infrastructure Ontario, an Ontario government agency, to “enhance the city of Toronto's ability to attract big-budget films and TV projects, as well as help strengthen Toronto's role as one of the world's great production centres," according to a statement from the studio.

Pinewood Toronto Studios, with eight existing soundstages, is owned by a consortium that includes the city of Toronto, and is run by Pinewood Shepperton via a management contract.