Written by new-contact on Nov 14, 2013. Posted in On Location

Calgary doubles for Minnesota for filming of Fargo TV miniseries

A TV miniseries based on the Coen Brothers’ Oscar-winning 1996 crime drama Fargo has started filming on location in Calgary in Alberta, Canada. The city is doubling for locations in northern Minnesota and is being supported by the Alberta Multimedia Development Fund.

“Over the next six months you may see a number of police vehicles from the United States on some Calgary roads,” said the Calgary Police Service in a statement to local residents: “This is part of production filming for the new TV series Fargo. Numerous scenes will be filmed in and around the Calgary area and will likely continue until May 2014.

“As part of the filming, the production company will be using a variety of different marked police vehicles made to look as if they are from the City of Bemidji Police and Duluth Police.”

Bemidji is a city north-east of Fargo in Minnesota, and Duluth is further east still on the edge of the Great Lakes.

Executives at the FX network revealed over the summer that location filming would take place in either Alberta or Manitoba and would be dependent on filming incentives and snowfall dates. Alberta offers a filming incentive of up to 30%, with a per-production cap of CAD5 million.

Calgary is doubling for locations in northern Minnesota and is being supported by the Alberta Multimedia Development Fund.

The original Fargo tells the story of a desperate car salesman whose life unravels when the staged kidnapping of his wife goes badly wrong. The miniseries will apparently be set in the same wintry world – the snowy landscape is a crucial element of the movie – but will tell a different story with new characters over a ten-episode arc.

(Fargo stills courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios)