Toronto Media & Entertainment

Toronto has carried the nickname "Hollywood North" since the late 1970s — and unlike a lot of city nicknames, this one is backed by genuinely large numbers.

A production centre since the 1970s

By 1979, Toronto's mayor was already announcing that Canada had become the third-largest movie production centre in North America, after Los Angeles and New York. The city is home to Pinewood Toronto Studios, Canada's largest film studio, and in 2023 alone, film and TV production contributed roughly $3.15 billion to Ontario's economy and close to 46,000 direct and spin-off jobs.

Why Toronto works for film and TV

Competitive tax incentives, a deep pool of skilled crew, and a downtown that can plausibly stand in for New York, Chicago or a generic American city on camera — all of which is exactly why so many productions shoot in Toronto without ever setting the story there.

Music: from a hip-hop and R&B hub to global reach

Toronto's Caribbean-rooted hip-hop scene — the same cultural current documented throughout the slang in this dictionary — produced an outsized share of 2010s-2020s global pop and R&B, led most visibly by Drake's OVO label and The Weeknd. TIFF (see our festivals guide) and the wider music/film ecosystem reinforce each other; a lot of the same city infrastructure supports both.

Sources

• Wikipedia — Hollywood North
• Toronto Global — What Makes Toronto "Hollywood North"?

Related dictionary terms

Continue reading

Toronto Festivals & Events

From the largest Caribbean carnival in North America to one of the world's biggest film festivals, Toronto's…

Queen's Park

Ontario's provincial legislature has run out of the same pink-sandstone Romanesque building since 1893 — a…

Steam Whistle Brewing

Founded in 2000 by three former employees of a large brewery that had just been shut down, Steam Whistle set…

The Avro Arrow

Built in Malton, just outside Toronto, the CF-105 Arrow was one of the most advanced jet interceptors in the…