Ryan Reynolds is setting up a production center in his native Canada.
Maximum Effort, the production and advertising company the “Deadpool” star co-founded and runs with George Dewey, is part of an ownership group for a new 1.2 million-square-foot studio located just outside of Markham, Ontario, Canada will be built in Toronto.
The studio is one of the first projects for a $1.5 billion private equity fund that will focus on real estate, sports, media and venture capital. Property development firm Watford Group, based in Markham, is leading the investment increase, which is halfway through.
“Maximum Effort has grown in ways and directions that we never imagined,” Reynolds said in a statement. “Founding a fund and building a 1.2 million square foot studio facility in Ontario is both stunning and humbling. Regardless, I look forward to expanding our storytelling skills in new directions and bringing more production work to Ontario.”
Construction of the new production studio, which the developers say will be Canada’s largest film and television production center, is slated to begin shortly. There is no estimated date for the completion of the studio. The facility is described as a fully integrated production studio for feature films, scripted and unscripted reality television, drama series, live-action and animated feature films. It will also include a technical incubator and a “virtual production campus” offering vocational training.
The location of the studio complex in Markham was originally planned for a 400,000-square-foot project called First Studio City, which would include 20 sound stages and was scheduled to open in 2020. This project never came to fruition.
Before Reynolds and Dewey formed Maximum Effort in 2018, they worked together on the Deadpool films. Maximum Effort’s production credits include 20th Century Studios’ Free Guy, The Adam Project for Netflix, Spirited for Apple TV+, Shotgun Wedding for Amazon Studios and the follow-up docu-series Welcome to Wrexham. . Reynolds and Rob McElhenney acquire Welsh football club Wrexham AFC for FX and Disney+.
In May 2021, Maximum Effort Productions signed a three-year first-look development deal with Paramount Pictures for feature film projects.
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