Prince George, B.C. – For the first time in over a decade, a feature film is scheduled to be shot in Prince George.

‘Hello Destroyer’ is a hockey drama with production set to start the end of next month.

In fact writer/director Kevan Funk and his crew are in Prince George this week scouting locations for the independent film.

“In the simplest way, it takes place in and around a hockey team, but more specifically it’s about this one kid whose life is sort of turned upside after there’s an accident during a game.

“It’s sort of about how his world is turned upside down as a result of this accident and how he deals with the aftermath of that.”

Half of the film will be shot in Vancouver while the other half, including the exterior scenes, will be shot here.

So why Prince George?

“Prince George is a place that has been on my radar for a long time. I really love the look and feel of the city,” says Funk. “We knew we wanted a place that was a bit more of a remote or distant location and a place that has a good, strong winter.”

As for the scope of the film, he cautions not to expect a Hollywood blockbuster where they’ll be shutting down blocks of traffic.

“We have a smaller crew than most people would, the amount of crew we’re bringing up here is somewhere around 20 people or so. It’s not a massive operation.”

However the reaction of locals to the film was anything but small when producers put out the call for auditions recently.

“We actually had to adjust that process, because we had such a strong, positive response,” says Funk. “We didn’t really know if we would have 50 people showing up but the response has been overwhelming, we’ve had hundreds of people respond.”

As a result, he says they’ve decided to hold off on auditions this week as they go through submissions, delaying them until later this month.

So when can we expect to see the final product?

“Our aim is to have it done for the fall, the film festival season,” says Funk. “We will also organize a screening here at some point next winter because so much of the community is going to be involved.”

Northern BC Tourism has been working with the film crew for about a year and a half.

“We’re really excited to be able to bring this up to the community and work with these guys and really get the community involved and engaged in the project,” says CEO Clint Fraser, who notes the last large scale production to be shot here was Dreamcatcher back in 2003.

“It’s been a while since we’ve seen a film production in Prince George, we’ve had some success in bringing some productions to other areas of northern B.C. like Smithers and Stewart, but it’s really nice to land something here.”