Pop Goes The News — Donald Sutherland will be in Southern Ontario this fall to star in a movie based on a 2008 children’s book by Eckhart Tolle and Robert Friedman.

Sutherland will play Grandpa Howard in Milton’s Secret, which begins production in September.

The 80-year-old Canadian actor is familiar to a new generation of movie-goers as President Snow in the Hunger Games movies.

Sutherland takes over the Milton’s Secret role from Peter Fonda, who signed on when the project was first announced in 2013.

A crowdfunding campaign with a $1 million goal raised less than $330,000.

The independent film, which has a reported budget of $5 million, was written by Barnet Bain (who will also direct) and veteran Canadian TV writer Donald Martin.

Milton’s Secret is the story of an 11-year-old bullied boy in an unhappy home who starts to see his life in a different way when his grandfather comes to visit.

The first adaptation of a Tolle book, it was originally scheduled to be filmed in the summer of 2013 in Vancouver, where the best-selling author lives.

“This project is close to my heart, as I love movies that not only entertain, but also contribute to the awakening of human consciousness,” said Tolle, in a release last month.