For the better part of four years, HBO’s post-apocalyptic drama The Last of Us turned stretches of southern Alberta into a zombie-stalked rolling vista that made audiences both terrified and jealous that they weren’t also hiking through unspoiled Canadian wilderness. Crews rolled through Calgary, Edmonton, Fort Macleod, Canmore, High River, and more than a dozen smaller towns throughout the early 2020s. Many of us got used to seeing the. 

According to Global News, production spent more than $141 million across Alberta, including more than $70 million in wages for local cast and crew, another similar amount on local businesses. Alberta’s government called it the largest series ever filmed in Canada: more than 1,490 jobs, support for over 1,000 local businesses, filming spread across upwards of 180 locations province-wide, and 24 Emmy nominations for its first season alone.

Drive through Calgary now and you can still point out where it happened. Downtown streets around 17 Avenue and Inglewood, the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton, Fort Macleod’s main street, and Waterton Lakes National Park (carried most of the rural footage in episode eight). Canmore was the cast’s favourite stop on the whole shoot, largely on the strength of the fudge.

Season two shifted a lot of that production north and west into British Columbia, which stung a little, but we still saw Exshaw and Bellevue both turn up again.

Canada and the video game boom

A recent industry survey found that 13 percent of video game developers had a title somewhere in the film or TV adaptation pipeline in 2025, up 3% from 2024, and Canada keeps turning up as the place where those adaptations actually get built. Fallout borrowed the Namib Desert for its wasteland exteriors, for instance, while the upcoming Marvel’s Wolverine from Sony is set to showcase British Columbia’s scenery thanks to artist Gavin Goulden, right down to Squamish Nation language on the signage. He described the joy of depicting ‘a city that’s usually “a filming location but portrayed as another city” finally getting to just be itself’.

Many developers are investing more time and money into establishing a clear footprint in cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Triple-A remains a cornerstone of the industry, as does the iGaming genre, with top developers like Pragmatic Play opening to newly regulated markets offering casino games at Leo Vegas and other leading platforms. Indie developers are gradually breaking away from the larger studios after some impressive tenures, experimenting with new styles and genres that blend together global interests with a decidedly Canadian twist, such as Embersail’s new Stuck in the Present. 

The line between one format – gaming – and another – TV and film – is growing increasingly blurred, but there’s one fascinating constant between the two: the growing influence that Canada’s cities and landscapes can have on creatives, and how much people from all over the world are willing to invest their time, admiration, and imagination into these unique and beautiful corners of the world.