It was quite the weekend for a local film production company, Barker Street Cinema as they hosted their Stephen King Dollar Baby Film Festival on their Youtube and Vimeo channel.
The ‘Stephen King Rules’ festival was viewed by 35,000 people from across 28 countries, including Stephen King himself, who has 6.5 million followers.
“Stephen King approved the festival but he also tweeted about the festival four times and while it was on he was retweeting about the festival so he was definitely watching,” explained Norm Coyne, Producer with Barker Street Cinema.
What fun! https://t.co/N7WFKeN6rS
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) April 24, 2021
Over three days, 29 films based on King’s stories were screened, including Barker Street’s production of Doctor Sleep, which was released in 2019 as a sequel to one of King’s most famous works, “The Shining”.
The Dollar Baby program allows filmmakers of all abilities to create their own take on King’s work.
It was established in 1977, as King wanted to give emerging filmmakers the opportunity to jumpstart their careers.
“A lot of extremely talented filmmakers were showcased, the great thing about the Dollar Baby program is it’s available to filmmakers of all levels so there were filmmakers of all walks of life that got to showcase their talent,” he noted.
Barker Street Cinema garnered a lot of attention from the festival and has already been approached by an organization looking to shoot an upcoming film in PG.
“It certainly put our name on lips across the globe, but more than anything this is just another in a long list of initiatives that we have been facilitating to draw attention to Prince George and things are really starting to happen here. I have a call scheduled later today by someone who reached out to me out of the blue saying they’ve been hearing great things about Prince George and they’re looking for a location to shoot a film.”
PG was recently the setting of ‘A Great North Christmas’, which is scheduled to be released this November.