Summerland to host feature film shoot

Published: April 13, 2009 12:00 PM Penticton Western News:

A Summerland heritage site will be featured in the upcoming film Gunless, which is being shot in the South Okanagan in the coming month. The Kettle Valley Steam Railway has been selected as one of the filming locations for the upcoming movie shoot, confirmed Jon Summerland of the Okanagan Film Commission. Summerland took Brightlight Pictures and Rhombus Media production team members to sites on the railway in early April as producers were in need of a historic rail bed for filming. "We toured some of the rail line on food and then took them out in our steam locomotive 3716 to several of the sites that weren't as easily accessible," explained KVSR general manager Ron Restrick."We look forward to having the film crew here for about three days — sometime in June and we extend our thanks to the Okanagan Film Commission for bringing them to the KVSR so they could see what we have to offer.Paul Gross, known for his roles in Passchendaele and Due South, will head to the Osoyoos in early May to begin production on Gunless, a western-themed comedy.

Gunless will be made on a modest $10 million budget, with help from Canada's Telefilm. It will be released in spring 2010.Gross may also be remembered from his directorial debut, the 2002 flick Men With Brooms — a comedic take on the sport of curling that broke Canadian box office records.