Canadian director Shawn Levy is a Hollywood hitmaker

Canadian movies are having a big moment. Over the summer, I fell in love with Matt Johnson’s riveting film Blackberry and found Chandler Levack’s small-budget flick I Love Movies touching, original and memorable. Emma Seligman’s film Bottoms—about high school friends who start a lesbian fight club to lose their virginity—was released a few weeks ago to tremendous buzz and attention. What’s up with Hollywood North? We’re so used to bemoaning our cinematic inadequacies that it’s a surprising joy to find a bunch of Canadian filmmakers at the centre of the cultural conversation.

No one is better equipped to answer this question than Shawn Levy, the Montreal-born director, screenwriter and producer behind box-office bangers such as Date Night, Cheaper by the Dozen and Night at the Museum. More recently he produced Stranger Things, and he’s partway through directing Deadpool 3. Levy’s production company, 21 Laps Entertainment, now has over 10 Netflix vehicles in the hopper.

In a wide-ranging Q&A for Maclean’s, Levy answers our questions about all the burning issues in filmmaking: the threat of AI, the streaming wars, how Canada has emerged as a cinematic powerhouse, and that up-and-coming generation of directors. “I cold-called Matt Johnson after I watched BlackBerry,” he admits. “It’s fun to tell someone you admire their work, even if you don’t know them.

—Sarah Fulford, editor-in-chief

Muskoka meets modern in this barnhouse-style home near Huntsville, Ontario, with black-stained metal siding and a gable roof, now on the market for $2.2 million. “It was made to stand out: one of only three modern builds in the community,” says homebuilder and current seller Alex Shaver.

At 14, Toronto’s Callum Shoniker has already landed roles on Kim’s Convenience and On the Basis of Sex (playing the son of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, no less). Now, he’s voicing the eco-obsessed pup Rocky in PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie—out tomorrow.

The symbiotic relationship between the forestry sector and Indigenous peoples plays a critical role in sustainability and growth.

CULTURE PICK
OF THE WEEK

Scarborough-born and Emmy-winning writer David West Read, who worked on Schitt’s Creek and wrote the Tony-nominated Broadway smash & Juliet, has a new contribution to Canada’s theatrical canon. Named after a popular Roy Orbison song and set to his biggest hits, In Dreams imagines a former country-rock singer who gathers her friends and bandmates for the party of a lifetime in New Mexico—with a secret twist, of course.

In the North American premiere, Lena Hall plays the lead alongside Manuel Pacific and Oliver Tompsett, who’s fresh off the West End playing Shakespeare in & Juliet. Keep those eyes peeled for Broadway legend Alma Cuervo as the resident sassy grandma. In Dreams is on now until November 12, at the Ed Mirvish Theatre in Toronto.

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