Welcome to Nick Antosca’s Winnipeg Channel Zero producer mines Manitoba for different facets of terror By: Randall King Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Thursday, Jun. 28, 2018

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/06/2018 (2684 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As the third season of Channel Zero wraps up this evening on Showcase (from 8 to 10 p.m.), please note how each season so far looks like it was shot in wildly different locations around Winnipeg.

Let’s recap:

Season 1, Candle Cove had a small-town/rural feel in its story of a child psychologist returning to his hometown to confront the circumstances of his younger brother’s disappearance years earlier.

Season 2, No-End House took to the suburbs for a chilling tale of a house of horrors existing in a pristine bedroom community.

The newest season’s entry, Butcher’s Block has a decidedly grungy urban vibe as a pair of sisters with a troubled past move to a new city, only to fall under the dark influence of a legendary butcher.

The series showrunner-writer-producer is Nick Antosca, a 35-year-old horror vet with credits on the TV show Hannibal and the 2016 Natalie Dormer horror film The Forest.

On the phone from Los Angeles, Antosca says that shooting each season of Channel Zero in Manitoba has inspired each subsequent season when it comes to locations.

“After scouting for season 1, I was able to write each season specifically for Winnipeg,” Antosca says.

“Going back and forth from the set of season 1, I was driving through these neighbourhoods and subdivisions and I got the image of what season 2 was going to be from that.

“And then I wrote season 3 thinking of the neighbourhoods in Winnipeg,” he says.

“I knew there’s this overgrown park in the woods right outside the city, so we had everything we needed, (and the city could) provide.

“It’s been pretty common on the show, that I’ll be driving past something and I’ll think: ‘That would be a good place to put a scene.’ In the first season, there’s an abandoned water park and we were just driving past it on a scout at one point and (I thought), ‘We’ve got to do a scene here.’

“Winnipeg has all kinds of things, which is one of the many reasons why I love it.”

Earlier this month, Antosca wrapped production on the show’s fourth season, The Dream Door, directed by Evan Katz and starring Brandon Scott, Maria Sten and Steven Weber.

It will air on the American cable network SyFy later this year.

But in the meantime, we have the third season, which director Arkasha Stevenson has described as “social realism mixed with a surrealistic esthetic.”

“I always imagined season 3 as kind of a deranged fairy tale, taking inspiration from Dario Argento movies, giallo movies and horror movies with a particularly vibrant, colourful, wild sensibility and also an intense dark humour,” Antosca says.

Antosca hasn’t stinted on hiring local talent for the series, including actor Linden Porco, memorable as a malevolent creature known as “Smartmouth” and Doreen Brownstone as “Grandma Peach,” as well as production designer Rejean Labrie and costume designer Heather Neale.

Antosca says he had it on good authority the talent base was here.

“Honestly, I wasn’t surprised, because a good friend of mine and one of our (Channel Zero) producers, Don Mancini, who created the Child’s Play movies, said the crews were great,” Antosca says.

“I knew there was a lot of talent to be found locally. In fact, there was enough talent, it was sometimes hard to choose because there’s a real wealth of experience, everybody’s really worked well together and it’s just been a real pleasure.”

The overall experience has facilitated what is, for Antosca, a dream job.

“Essentially, what we’re doing is making a six-chapter movie every nine months with different directors, different actors, a totally different story a different look and a different feel,” he says.

“It really is a great privilege for a writer. You get to tell a series of different stories, one after the others.

“It’s incredibly fulfilling.”

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing

Randall King
Reporter

In a way, Randall King was born into the entertainment beat.

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