THUNDER BAY -- Thunder Bay is getting a taste of Hollywood in the dead of winter.
The city's own Casey Walker is directing another Thunder Bay star, actor Kevin Durand, in the horror picture Ithaqua, which is being filmed at locations around the city between now and mid-February.
According to posts on Walker's social media pages, filming has already begun.
"Gonna be a banger," Walker wrote last week on an Instagram post, showing a stash of old-time replica pistols and rifles.
On Saturday Walker posted after the passing of director David Lynch.
"Day 4 of #Ithaqua was bittersweet. I wrote a shot description 11 years ago that stayed in every subsequent draft, and today I put it on film," he said. "I'm incredibly proud of it. But at lunch I learned of the passing of an artist whose early words first opened my eyes and challenged my beliefs to what cinema as a whole is really capable of. Rest well, Mr. Lynch."
The movie also stars Luke Hemsworth and Michael Pitt.
According to hollywoodnorthbuzz.com, Hemsworth stars as a hired gun, brought in to deal with a supernatural threat at the end of the Fort William fur trade. Walker posted a picture from Fort William Historical Park on his Instagram page.
The movie description, according to the Hollywood North Buzz website:
"Cole Franklin, an American mercenary, is recruited as a hired gun and guide at the remote outpost of Fort William, which is struggling to survive the decline of the fur trade. With dwindling supplies, the keepers of the Fort blackmail Cole into leading a trading party to a nearby Indigenous village where they discover a massacre and encounter the remaining half-crazed inhabitants for the bloodshed.
"Though the trading party survives with minimal losses and returns to the Fort with a bonanza of food and furs, the supernatural force responsible for the carnage follows them back. As the casualties stack up, it becomes evident that something unnatural is driving the residents insane with murderous hunger. The rag-tag band of survivors forces Cole to put his military expertise to use in organizing their last stand against what can only be described as some kind of madness."
Durand, who turned 50 last week, has been spotted around town over the past week. He's best known for roles in Lost, playing the Blob in X-Men Origins and Little John in Robin Hood. More recently he voiced Proximus Caesar in Kingdom of the Planet of the Ape.
Walker declined an interview request from Newswatch.
