GoKawiilA file photo of Vancouver, British Columbia. Pierre Longnus/Getty Images
When Fox’s “Alcatraz” premiered in 2012, San Francisco’s busy street corners and famous island-bound prison were hallmarks of the production. Curiously, the show wasn’t actually shot in San Francisco, but several hundred miles north — in Vancouver, British Columbia.
“Alcatraz” isn’t the only show set in San Francisco but filmed in Vancouver. Hulu’s “Woke,” the CW’s “Kung Fu” and Netflix’s “The Bletchley Circle: San Francisco” are among the many TV shows that are set in San Francisco but — you guessed it — predominantly shot in Vancouver.
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Why not simply shoot the shows in their script’s settings? It’s a complicated answer that involves infrastructure, tax incentives and myriad other complications.
Geoff Teoli, the acting Vancouver film commissioner, thinks there’s a series of factors that make Vancouver an attractive place to film compared to other locations.
“I think that the ability to have a diversity of looks, or a world of looks, is really what supports a lot of decision-makers and producers to come here,” he told SFGATE recently. “[Filmmakers] can use Vancouver to portray a whole variety of locations around the world, the Bay Area, of course, but up and down the coast as well.”
Coastal Vancouver serves as an apt stand-in for the city by the bay. It has plentiful gorgeous Victorians that look just like something you’d find in San Francisco. It even gets a fine layer of fog when the weather is just right.
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A handful of major blockbusters set in San Francisco were filmed largely in Vancouver. Among them are 2017’s “War for the Planet of the Apes,” 2014’s “Godzilla,” various “X-Men” films, Ali Wong’s “Always Be My Maybe” and Tim Burton’s “Big Eyes.” In these various films, the British Columbia region serves as an unmistakable stand-in for San Francisco, and in many of them, it’s hard to tell the difference between the two cities.
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