The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Do You Sell Canadian Films to Canadians?

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

As Canada marks National Canadian Film Day, new data from Telefilm Canada shows 2025 was one of the weakest box office years this decade for Canadian films. Why aren't audiences turning out? Sonya Yokota William, Francesca Accinelli, and Noah Segal examine what is holding Canadian movies back and what could rebuild viewership. Then, a look at another cultural shift: how the internet changed Canadian music. Rundown producer Colin Ellis speaks with author Cam Gordon about his new book "Track Changes" and the digital forces that reshaped the industry.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm Nam Kiwanuka, host and producer of mistreated, a podcast on women's health. There just hasn't been a lot of money put into researching women's health issues. If women are in pain, it's hysteria, it's an emotional issue. And this is what you see consistently. Women's health is not taken seriously. How did we get here? Find us wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to check out the video version of the show on the TVO Today YouTube channel. Hope to see you then. All right, I have a question to ask. When was the last time you watched a Canadian movie?

Seriously, was it even this year? If not, today would be the perfect excuse because it's National Canadian Film Day. April 15th is National Canadian Film Day, with over 2,000 free screenings across Canada. And we have some homegrown successes. Last year, Quebec's Montus made more than $2.5 million. dollars. Ma Belle Mere and a

sossiere snagged more than a million. And this year, English language films like Nirvana, the band, the show, the movie, and undertone are doing big numbers. So things are looking up, right? Well, not exactly. According to data from telefilm box office revenue for Canadian films fell more than 40% last year. So what happened? Well, one explanation that's getting some attention is from Cineplex president and CEO Ellis Jacob,

who says the quality is to blame. Are Canadian movies really just not good enough, or is something else going on here? Today, we're breaking down what's behind the slump and what it would take to have a blockbuster year. And later, remember Napster, MP3s, message boards? Well, we talked to author Kim Gordon about how the early days of the internet shaped Canadian music.

Welcome to the rundown. Telefilm data shows 2025 was one of the worst years this decade for Canadian films at the box office. Only 2020 and 2022 were worse. So why aren't Canadians turning out for Canadian movies? Sonja Yokata, William is the founder and director of the network of independent Canadian exhibitors. Francesca Achenelli is chief program officer at Telefilm Canada. And Noah Siegel is the co-president of Eleval. Pleasure. Great to have you both in our studios. Sonia, great to have you on the line. Francesca, I'm going to come to you first. Telefilm Canada released data earlier this year,

showing a nearly 41% drop in box office revenue for Canadian films last year. What do you attribute that decline to? I think I'd like to start with the positive. I'd like to start with the fact that we had at least two Canadian films that hit over a million dollars. We had the Zupacalypse-Ocalypse, and we had the Keeper, and then we also had Montez's. in Quebec. Canada is experiencing what the rest of the world is experiencing. Independent cinema is trying to find its place. It's trying to find it to place in cinemas, as well as online. And for us, our access to screens in Canada is sometimes limited. So it takes those few titles to kind of punch through, create the excitement, find its audience.

What we know is when Canadian films find their audiences, people will come and see them in the cinemas. So yes, global trend, not everybody wants to get off their seats and come into the cinemas. You have many options at home. But boy, when you find the films that connect with them, they will show up. They will connect with the filmmakers. They'll connect with the actors. And they want to see their stories on screen. So decline maybe, but I think we're on a positive trend.

Sonia, I'll get your take on there as well. Yeah, I mean, of course, I think the number is bad. I think all of us thought that when we saw the 40%. And I also think, you know, look, there's going to be years where the movies hit and years where they don't. Frankly, you know, as Francesca alluded to, Hollywood hasn't been looking too great over the past couple years either. You know, Cineplex was also making headlines earlier this year because their profits were down nearly 90. percent in Q4 2025. And that was largely due to the lack of big Hollywood blockbusters, films not performing

the way that we thought they would. And 90 percent, that's way higher than 40 percent. And, you know, we're not coming together to talk about the quality of those films. So, you know, I think everyone has an opinion on how to make a big film that's going to draw in a bunch of people and many of those same people try and fail. And in our business, that's just kind of the way that these things happen. So, you know, from my perspective, from the Network of Independent Canadian Exhibit, from the cinema perspective, when I see that 40% number,

what stands out to me is there's no clarity within that number. So in Canada, we're very familiar with market concentration, and I would like to kind of introduce to your audience the fact that Cineplex has a 75% box office market share in this country. So for context, Loblaws has up to 30% market share. And we've been talking about Loblaws since the pandemic lockdowns.

So if we're saying, you know, Canadian film is 40% down, then you just take a zoom out and say, you know, 75% of that total gross number that we're taking from is attributed to Cineplex. So I think if you want to improve this number, we kind of need to know where the growth is and where we can do better. And also kind of ask the question, also like Francesco was saying, like, were many Canadians even given the opportunity to watch a Canadian film on the big screen in last year? All right. No, I'll get your thoughts and numbers there. I completely agree with what's funny and what Fran said about the some of the going on. I think that is a misnomer of the 41%. It's too vague a number and the way it was

presented is just it's odd. The truth of the matter is that we are two solitudes in Canada. We're a French market and an English market. And in Quebec, they really had the biggest pain this last year. The English market's only down like 5%. So that 41% when you do that a calculation, you really see that the problem was that Quebec films weren't hitting. English films were with a marginal discount. The truth is we're not a massive proportion of the entire cinema market, but whatever we are,

it was a marginal drop, and you're already seeing a massive increase flip in the first quarter of this year. So, in fact, I would argue when you do the numbers this year, we're going to be up in English market, probably 10 or 15%. So there's going to be a natural up and down. This doesn't discount the fact

that Hollywood's had his ups and downs and, you know, the world has changed to some extent, but the real reality is Canadians are going to Canadian films. It's English Canadians for sure. And Quebecers just experienced what English Canadians had felt for a long time, which is that Hollywood came back with a vengeance last year in the summer with the major studios providing content that people wanted to see.

And I think when they started putting out their films in Quebec, assuming they were sort of inoculated against people going to one of the other, as Franie said, they weren't. I mean, they were going to see sinners. They were going to see one battle left or another. Films that actually were studio films, but kind of took a letter out of the independent landscape and got that audience to move over.

So I think that's where Quebec got hit, and I think they've already started to learn their lesson. But English Canada, I'd say it's really not the right note. 4% percent is not a very accurate assessment at all. It's a 5% dip, which is very, very... We can definitely galvanize ourselves. You said a word in their response, the word hit, and I want a better understanding of what a hit is.

Francesco, what does a Canadian film have to earn to be considered success? I think that's a complicated question. Telfam actually we're trying to redefine what a hit looks like and what does success look like. We've just talked about box office. Telefilm used to be measured by box office. And I don't think it's necessarily realistic to use box office alone. And so what we're trying to do is expand. And, you know, if a film that we invest in can actually find its audience, whether it's in cinemas, whether it's online, whether it's community screenings, that should be deemed a success.

And we're working towards measuring that to be able to say, if I can find, you know, if my film is set in Sudbury and I connect with the people of Sudbury and they see themselves on screen, we need to say that that is a success. independent cinema, authentic stories, when they find their audience, that, for me, as an investor in most of Canadian cinema, that is what we're trying to hit. That being said, we live in a, you know, film as an economic driver. And I would, I'm going to look to Noah, but I think, you know, for us in English Canada, if we can hit a million, you know, in terms of box office, that's successful. Okay. And I think I'm excited to see and we'll maybe talk about it later. But we've got some films that are hitting that number. And what I'm excited by is now that we do have nice as an organization,

our independent cinemas are really starting to play a bigger and bigger role in contributing to that audience engagement and that box office success. All right. Well, let's talk about a movie. Nirvana, the band, the show, The Movie, is one example of an English-Canadian movie that's done really well. Noah, what do you attribute its success to? How wacky the movie is.

No, first and foremost, it comes to the movie, and the movie is ridiculously funny and over the top. They're incredibly talented filmmakers, and historically, I'll give you a little sidebar. Usually we buy a movie off a script and the talent attachments and everything like that. When Matt and Matt and Matt, Matt the producer, co-writer and Matt, the other Matt Johnson, the director and co-writer and star,

came to pitch us. They pitched us a movie entirely different. No script. from what we actually got. We had no idea what movie were getting teledelivered. A little unusual, I imagine. But it surpassed everything we thought it was going to be.

And they're a tremendous talent to work with. So A, the movie was really fun. And on a very crass level, it's Four Quadrant. There's nothing in that movie that will not allow... What do you mean by that? Four Quadrant means everybody can see it. Men, women, young, old. You can bring a family to that movie and not be insulted.

There's nothing in that movie that would be offensive. Okay. So it's entertaining, funny, adventurous, crazy, unexpected, and available. On top of that, to what Frannie was saying, it's community base. There's a ton in that movie that is very localized to Canada,

not just Toronto. They do through things off the C& Tower, which is in the trailer, which is very localized, but sort of a national sort of place, artifice, but on top of that, they go into Canadian Tire. So it's got this real vibe

of like Canadians can relate to it and be about the history of Toronto and the history of a Canadian city in the context of a crazy, wacky comedy adventure. The reason it was so successful, beyond that is the talent was available. We learned this with Marty Supreme,

with Timothy Chalmay doing his ridiculous videos online and doing all the crazy stunts he did for Marty Supreme, which drove that film to some form of success. These guys did a very similar thing. Matt and Jay were everywhere. They were at screenings, meeting talent, not just random locations. We had merch available that they did signings of.

They were totally available to their fan base, and they were everywhere. They did stuff on digital that was ridiculous. ridiculous that was in support of the film. And then we promoted the film with a ton of advertising dollars. So we picked the right time of year. We had the talent supportive. We had a major barrage of marketing and then merch. And we had a movie to back it up that was that delivered on the promise. So you have all those things going in and we had a real hit. And to Franie's point, it's exceeding that. It's already in its 11th or 12th week in theater. It's not receding.

It's still going. And in terms of Sonia's thing, the film came out and did well in Cineplex, but the number two cinema was an independent cinema. So you have a situation where the community got behind it. They went to their community screen to watch this, and they still are. So we're ecstatic with the success of that film. And it's also, if I can say, it's also authentic. Like I think one of the things that we see now more than ever, and forgive me, but I've been around a long time,

we used to have trends where we tried to model ourselves after the Americans. And for some genres, some topics that works. But we're seeing more and more with Nirvana, you know, we're seeing it, even with undertone and others. When we're actually leaning into our unique voice, our Canadian voice, our perspective, it actually amplifies it. That's what this generation, I think, this Gen Z or whatever, I think that's what they're called, whatever my children are. But that's what they want. They want authentic. They want authentic voices.

They can get copycat anywhere else, and that's what's so exciting about, you know, the Matt Squared, as I call them, because they are authentically themselves and you go on the ride with them. And that's what's magical right now. Sonia, I'll get your take on there and sort of the role of independent exhibitors

in sort of these successes and hits here. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think that with the large titles, of course, you know, you're going to have your real. really big performing cinemas that can carry a film for a long time, these independent stalwarts in the big city centers. And that's for the big titles, I also feel like for Canadian film, a really crucial role that independent cinemas play is really elevate the small local film,

the films that maybe don't open all across Canada, but will open, you know, in just BC cinemas and really resonate with their local community. And so, you know, for me personally, one of my favorite films is Seagrass, a Canadian film from 23, and that's about growing up but, you know, a half Japanese family in the west coast of BC, and, you know, that's my childhood. And so for me, that was a film of very high quality, and I feel like that film and, you know, that middle amount of film, these indie films that I think are growing in cultural resonance, those are very well served by the independence.

All right. Let's talk a little controversy. Sonia, I want to ask you first, because you brought up Cineplex. I want to get your reaction on comments. The president's CEO of Cineplex, Ellis Jacob, made recently about the slump. He said the awareness is a little lower, but it's also the quality of the content. It's not bringing droves of people to the theaters. Should mention we did invite Ellis Jacob to join us, but Cineplex did decline. Sonia, your thoughts. We'll talk about awareness, but I think the word that hurts, I think, is quality. Yeah, I mean, I think the question that comes to mind for everyone who hears that is, what is the definition of quality? You know, I highly doubt that

Ellis Jacob watched all 100 plus Canadian films that came out last year. And I think what we can take from that statement is what he means is the money-making potential of these movies, right? So one that does raise the question that Fran brought up earlier is like, do we want to assess films on the basis of dollars and stents? But for me, once again, pulling back, I really think the crux of this is one thing for the average person to say, oh, I don't think Canadian films are of high quality. I do think it's a problem if the leader of the organization that's responsible for 75% of the money made by selling movie tickets in this country is making a blanket statement about the economic viability of Canadian films. Noah? Yeah, I would echo some of those things.

I think the thing is you have to understand context. I think if Ellis would have added, but we'll still give access for Canadian film in our cinemas, because sometimes right, It's look at it like a broadcaster with limited slots. And so we need those slots at those cinemas. We need to have the ability to place those movies in, and we need to have a runway to promote those movies so the consumer can know they're there. So we need cash to do it to make sure they can hear us.

We need the slot, and we need that guaranteed. And I think Ellis, to his credit, would say the exact same comment to Disney when one of their films disappoints too. The quality's not there. And I'm sure they would complain too, saying that we make good stuff. I agree with Sanya.

Quality to him is just the quality of putting a movie in my cinema and getting 90% occupancy. That's what he's talking about. And frankly, that's what he should talk about because we need to make sure it's viable, right? We may, as community, like to make movies. We've got to make sure consumers want to see those movies. So what defines art is not just us,

but it's what they want to see. So I wouldn't come down too hard on him as long as he commits to making sure that there's slots there. and he's not making it difficult for independent cinema to exist too, which Ellis is a seasoned guy. You know, he understands that there is a quid pro quo. We have to make room for content, and we have to allow it to be placed.

And I think that's the biggest battle that has to go on behind doors is making sure those movies get places. A great place for us to end our conversation. I want to thank you all. This was quite lovely. Thank you. Thank you very much for putting Canadian cinema here. We appreciate it.

Appreciate you guys. Thanks. MP3s. When music went online, the whole industry changed. Rundown producer Colin Ellis sat down with Cam Gordon, author of the new book, Track Changes, the origin story of Canadian music on the internet, and former head of communications for Twitter Canada to talk about how that era reshaped music here. Why was this history worth writing a book about? I think it was worth writing about because it's never really been written about before. Not all all, a singular narrative at least.

I mean, I think this book is a quintessentially, like, Canadian history book because it's really, really putting it together was an act of curation. A lot of these stories lived in, you know, websites that aren't online anymore, or the odd article here, or maybe something I found at, you know, the Toronto Reference Library and whatnot. So it lived in all these bits and pieces, but there never was like a fulsome story about all the ways that the internet impacted Canadian music. So when I came up with the book idea several years ago,

it was a real lightball moment. It's like, if it's not me, someone needs to write this too, because I think it's a really important story and something that needs to be documented for future generations. I want to go back to the early 90s. The internet, there was not that many websites. It was maybe 623, I think, in 1993. Why would a band at that time be interested

in using the internet, what would be in it for them? When you think back of really, certainly during those times and really throughout like a lot of the 1990s, the internet seemed to be almost more a concept than a reality. So people would hear about it. You know, it used to be more the domain of like academics and, you know, just like the computer club down the street and frankly, like nerds. Like nerds would use it. But even to get on the internet was really challenging because you need the right type of computer.

You need like a modem. You need some sort of internet connection. So I know for me, like, sure, like we had America online for my last couple years at high school, but through university in the late 90s, I primarily use the internet because I'd go to the computer lab at Master University. It was almost this shared entity. So that's a big part of, like, the theme in the book, too, where where were those, like, really foundational elements of, like, when our almost, like, access to the internet change? So when we went from, like, five hours through AOL to, like, all you can,

need internet or when Wi-Fi became, you know, really mainstream where all of a sudden you could take your laptop to any room of the house. And then like the big one, and this is almost right outside the scope of the book, is really when smartphones became like fully mainstream. So, you know, when you think of the era of the book 1990 to 2010, the iPhone was around towards the tail end, and it's almost like the heyday of the Blackberry. But then like right outside the scope of the book, both smartphones took over and social media took over. And that's a whole other So when you look back to like those early days of the internet, you know, if you were a band, you sort of knew that it was a way to connect to people around the world, but you didn't really know even what that meant at this point. It's like, okay, so I'm going to get a couple of people in Denmark and a couple of people in California, but what does that even mean? But very, very quickly, this accelerated and it just changed everything as we saw.

Well, some of the bands that you talk about in the book, I mean, they were using mailing lists. Yeah. And there was a very, one called Sloanet. You want to tell us what that was? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the big themes in the book is it's really the fan communities and the enthusiasts. They did a lot of the legwork early on, and Sloanet's a perfect example of that. So what Sloanet was, was, it actually took a few different forms. It was an emailing list, and then it was, I believe it changed into like a Yahoo group at some point, but really was a fan-built community for fans of Sloan, you know, the great East Coast indie rock sensation of the 90s into the present day, it was just a place like Sloan fans could connect online. And, you know, the classic

mailing list format, it was just, it was an ongoing dialogue. You know, some people generally were seeing by email. And, you know, it was typical stuff fans talk about it. It's like, oh, I heard they're recording a new album or I'm looking for this seven inch or, hey, I saw, you know, it was a great way to also discover, like other bands sort of adjacent to Sloan, like other East Coast artists, like people talk about like Hardship Post out of Newfoundland. or you got Eric's trip from New Brunswick. So it's really an opportunity to have these deep, immersive conversations about your favorite band.

And I know with Sloan, the guys from Sloan were not directly involved, but really quickly they started to give little bits of access. You know, they'd invite them down to their label office or, you know, there'd be other little things that they'd sort of slip them little nuggets and whatnot. And again, it was all built by the fan communities. But to their credit, like their management and the people around the band, very quickly saw, you know, we should tap into this because these people care and these are like

good advocates for us too. And again, yeah, there wasn't a lot of people online, but the people were there were, you know, they were like ambassadors for the band. Mission record labels. Like what did they do exactly? How did they sort of take advantage of this? Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you know, here in Canada, like one of the real frontrunners was network records out of Vancouver. I know that they had like a BBS, like a online like message board, like a real Primordia one as early as 1993. I was actually able to dig up their very first BBS message via the internet archive. And it was almost like a statement of purpose. They're like, you know, we're network records. We're out of Vancouver. Some of our artists are Skinny Puppy and

Sarah McLaughlin. And, you know, we're kind of they're just saying we're into technology. We're going to try some stuff. Here's a bit of information about our artists. Skinny Puppy is going on tour. Sarah McLaughlin has this new album out. Hey, we're going to. the Graves of Wrath have just, you know, change your name to Ginger, and they're going to have a CD-ROM coming out. And they're just putting out, like, bits of information. So, I mean, that's kind of the indie label, but we did see as well. Like, the major labels, they did jump on this.

And again, they did their own experience, like Sony and Universal. It was interesting for the major labels in the 1990s, too, because it was also a period of, like, a lot of consolidation to. Someone I spoke to for the book, Pete Watts. And he was, like, a real... an early web guy for MCA records, and he was there getting them on to the internet, and then it merged or it became part of Universal.

So they went over to Universal and did the exact same thing. And meanwhile, he's running all these internet experiences. So a really, like, interesting time, too, where there was so much change happening in the industry, almost corporately. Meanwhile, there's this thing called the internet, and then two years down the line, there's a thing called Napster,

and then a bit later, there's this thing called the iPod. It's like, you thought the internet, internet was a big deal. You haven't seen anything yet. Yeah, the pace of change is really fascinating because I mean, I mean, obviously one of those early adopters of Napster and then it became, and then there was iTunes and then, yeah, it's like you're no longer buying CDs anymore and then you're streaming. It's like, how do you even like, I mean, how do you go, how does it go like so fast? Like, how do you, I guess, keep track of like how, and how did these people who are working on in this field, how did they like

adapt to those changes like so fast? Well, I mean, that's the thing. Some people did it to the changes. Some people did not. So, I mean, you know, we go back to the retailers. You know, Sam the Record Man, probably our most famous, you know, Canadian born and bred record store. They didn't survive it. I mean, they tried, to their credit, they tried a lot of things. You know, they had a Sam CD. They were selling CDs online. They were even hiring, like, journalists to write for their website, too. So they gave it a shot. But, I mean, you know, people's entire relationship with physical music change. Certainly when Napster came in and all of a sudden, well, you could go to Sam the Record band or HMV or music world and buy a CD, you know, 12 tracks.

Or you can go to Napster and for cheaper, basically, zero dollars, you can have all the music. Yeah. You know, for a lot of music fans, sadly it was an easy decision. But one of the things I realized, and it really like hit home writing the book is you have these like really huge shifts caused by Napster and the iPod and iTunes and whatnot. But they were all like really short-lived at the same time. I don't think I'd really thought about how short-lived the iPod was until I started writing this. It was like, it's hayday was maybe six or seven years for like a device.

I mean, it's... Went through different changes too, right? I mean, there was the iPod, there was the Nano, there was the iTunes, there was the Eye Touch, like it was all these different like types of iPod. But yeah, you're right, it wasn't that wrong. Yeah, like it didn't. I think really, you know, that change as soon as like the first iPhone came out because all of a sudden you've got this other device,

not only does it kind of look like and function like an iPod, It's also your phone, too. And from there, I mean, you know, that was the signal of, like, the beginning of the end for iPods and MP3 players, too. I mean, I know Microsoft came out with the Zoom. And, you know, you might recall at the end, you would just have, like, almost like a thumb drive and it would have, like, a little port for headphones. And it's an MP3 player. You know, we're in this new era now of artificial intelligence AI.

And it's sort of disrupting the Internet music industry, what have you. I don't know if you make predictions. but do you have a sense as to where this is going? God, I would probably have a different career if I did. Honestly, I don't think anybody knows where it's going. I think, you know, we can probably predict, like, in the margins and some corners, but I don't know. Like, one thing I would say is, you know, a future where everything is, like,

a completely automated form of celebrity would not surprise me at all. Like, you know, we've had animation for a long time. we've had like fake bands for forever, you know, whether it's like the Archies or even, you know, someone like Daft Punk or, you know, gorillas take your pick. There is some precedence for this and I think also there's other like little clues that aren't necessary about technology, but I think speak to how our relationship with artists is going to change. Like a lot of bands selling off their back catalogs and not just like legacy artists, like younger artists like Justin Bieber and Imagine Dragons. I also think, you know, there's, but then there's also these legacy. bands have never been more popular. I always think of Queen. Like Queen seems like they've never been more popular and have not been active for 30 years because, well, but they've had biopics

and they've had musicals and they've been merchandise and whatnot. So I think like artists' brands is really going to change. And then in terms of new artists, is it going to be the humans versus the machines to see who can get to the top of the charts? I think we will see a version of that. I don't know exactly what it will look like and when it will happen. But I do think there's going to be a future soon where a version of that reality is here. I feel like we may already be here. That's a good place to leave it. Pam Gordon, thank you so much for joining us on the Rundown. Thank you. I am JAN. Thanks for watching The Rundown. What topics would you like to see us tackle? Send us your suggestions to rundown at tvo.org or as always, you can leave us a comment on

YouTube. Until then, I will see you tomorrow.