Filming is going down in the Ladner Village this week for an upcoming Netflix horror series about terminally ill teens telling scary, late-night stories in their hospice’s library.
Based on Christopher Pike’s 1994 novel, the 10-episode series is being adapted by Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong, both of whom were part of the team that brought us The Haunting of Bly Manor, among many other titles.
“Mike Flanagan is quite well known in the horror industry. He’s kind of like the ‘it guy’ right now. He’s like the modern-day Wes Craven,” chuckles a member of Field House Production’s location team who spoke with the Optimist.
With the working title The Midnight Club, the series is a collaboration between Field House Productions ULC, Intrepid Pictures and Netflix and has, so far, been categorized by Netflix as “Teen TV shows, TV dramas, TV horror.”
The location team member says Ladner Village was chosen for filming because it aligned well with the “look” that they’re going for in the series, where a significant amount of episode six and seven’s scenes take place outside of storefronts.
“We needed to find a building that had three empty storefronts that we could completely dress the way we needed to,” they say.
Following a fire at the end of 2019, the empty tenant spaces along 48 Avenue in the Village made for the perfect spot to create their own shops, which will include a dance studio, a video game store and a hardware store, they say.
The crew also plan on filming at the Ladner United Church, where they hope to showcase a stained-glass window in the background of a scene.
“I know Ladner has had some not-so-great film experiences in the past … and so, everything that we’ve been doing has been in service of that, to make it an enjoyable experience for the businesses and the tenants and everyone else,” says the location team member.
After this round of filming in Ladner Village, The Midnight Club cast and crew will be headed to Spanish Banks Beach in Vancouver, to a couple locations in Surrey and then will return to a grocery store in Vancouver.
