Despite the rainy weather, the show did go on at Labatt Park Friday evening with cameras rolling on the latest movie to use London, Ont. as a filming location.
Production for You Gotta Believe rolled into the Forest City for the first of two stops while filming in Ontario this summer.
While little was known of the movie before coming to London, American entertainment publication Deadline reported Thursday evening the film would be starring Luke Wilson and Greg Kinnear, with Molly Parker and Sarah Gordon also on board.
A casting call for extras described the film as, “A heart wrenching and inspiring independent feature film telling the incredible story of a Texan little league baseball team making it against all odds to the 2002 Little League World Series.”
Manager of Film London, Andrew Dodd, said it was months ago when the scouting and production team for the movie reached out about using Labatt Park for one of the settings.
“Once they knew they were going to be Ontario based… and doing a historic baseball movie, then Labatt Park is obviously going to come on their radar,” said Dodd.
Casting calls went out a few weeks ago for locals to appear in extras as fans in the stands during games. Speaking in between takes while filming was ongoing, Londoner Austin Trotman said he considered the opportunity to appear in a movie a “bucket list” item.
“It’s a cool thing to be a part of a movie and it’s cool that they are doing filming here,” said Trotman, adding the fact they were at Labatt Park made it extra special.
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Another extra praising the use of Labatt Park is London Mayor Josh Morgan.
“What’s really neat about using this space is a movie is being filmed in the oldest continuous-used ballpark in the world,” said Morgan ahead of filming.
“It really gives this gem of our city a cool place in cinema history.”
Dodd, who helped show the production team around Labatt Park, says he thinks it was “gut instinct” for why the team chose to film in London.
Other than exchanging the Canadian flags for American ones and covering up some signage that would give away where the movie is being shot, not many alterations were being made to the stadium.
Over the past year, London has hosted numerous productions, like the recently released Blackberry. Morgan gave big kudos to Dodd and the Film London team with the London economic development corporation for the growth in movie and television production coming to the city.
“We can do things at a very affordable rate for these productions, and we have such amazing spaces across the city that can be both unique or seen as everyday,” said Morgan.
For his part, Dodd says there is more to come with “irons in the fire” for later this year.
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