‘Flatliners’ gets a second life in Toronto this summer

Pop Goes The News — Ellen Page and Nina Dobrev are coming home to Canada this summer to breathe new life into the 1990 sci-fi drama Flatliners.

Cameras are scheduled to roll on the reboot in Toronto from July 11 to the end of August with Page and Dobrev starring opposite Mexican actor Diego Luna.

Also starring in the remake is James Norton (Happy Valley) and Kiersey Clemons (Transparent).

Page, 29, is a Halifax native who attended school in Toronto and worked in the city on the 2004 series ReGenesis. Bulgaria-born Dobrev, 27, grew up in Toronto.

Flatliners, which follows a group of medical students caught up in near-death experiments that go wrong, will be directed by Niels Arden Oplev, who directed the original Swedish adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Among the new version’s producers is actor Michael Douglas, who was a producer of the original Flatliners and also made 2001’s Don’t Say a Word, 2003’s The In-Laws, and 2006’s The Sentinel in Toronto.

Flatliners opened at No. 1 at the box office in August 1990 and went on to gross over $61 million in the U.S. and Canada.

Directed by Joel Schumacher, it starred Toronto-raised Kiefer Sutherland with Julia Roberts and Kevin Bacon. The cast also included William Baldwin and Ontario-born Oliver Platt.

The film was mostly shot in Chicago.

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Page is known for films like Juno, Inception and X-Men: Days of Future Past. Dobrev was part of the Degrassi: The Next Generation cast and went on to star in The Vampire Diaries and 2012’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

Dobrev has a role in xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, which has been shooting in Toronto.

Luna, 36, broke out in the acclaimed sex drama Y tu mamá también in 2001 and has gone on to star in films like 2004’s Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights and 2013’s Elysium. He will appear this December in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

The Flatliners reboot will be filming in Toronto at the same time Sutherland is in the city making the new ABC series Designated Survivor.