21st Century Fox was downtown in Portage la Prairie Monday, filming scenes for a movie at Ian's Hardware. Owner Ian Roberts explains how his store was selected for the film.

Ian Roberts"It wasn't long ago," says Roberts. "They contacted me the first of April to see if I was interested in it. And I said, 'Yes, no problem at all.' And then it just went ahead from there. They started at 10:00 in the morning and left about 3:00 in the afternoon. There was a lot of setup involved. The actual filming only took about 20 minutes."

Roberts says 105 film crew members were there, filling the store. He notes the scene showed a man in the paint aisle looking at an item when he received a call that his son crashed into the ice of a frozen lake and was underwater. Roberts says the father then ran out of the store, jumped into his car and sped away. RCMP police cruisers were on location to ensure safety during the car's getaway.

The Film is based on a true story of a 14-year old boy from St. Louis who miraculously survived a 15-minute stint underwater.

Roberts says the movie company created some signs they used to cover the Castle logos on either side of the storefront's title for trademark reasons, and let him keep them as mementos. He notes they also Americanized the windows with American voting logos for realism, seeing as the events actually took place in St. Louis.

 

Some Americanizing logos for storefront

Custom sign given to Roberts as a memento of the movie