People of the West Kootenay get ready, The Tall Man cometh. The Nelson area has been the stage for several movies over the years  including Roxanne, Snow Falling on Cedars, Out Cold and A Simple Curve  and now another one is set to be filmed in the region this fall.

The Tall Man, a thriller film directed and produced by the French filmmaking duo, Pascal Laugier and Clement Miserez is planned for filming this fall on location at various locations throughout the region, including Salmo, Nelson and Sandon.

Set in the run-down mountain town of Cold Rock, The Tall Man stars the sultry Jessica Biel (Texas Chainaw Massacre, Blade, Trinity), girlfriend of mega-star, Justin Timberlake, as a doctor who moves from the city to Cold Rock to set up a clinic and help out the community.

But after she arrives, children in the community start to go missing and she changes from heroine to villain with a plot twist at the end.

John Wittmayer, a Slocan Valley resident who has worked in the Canadian film industry for decades, helped Laugier and Miserez decide to film their movie here in the West Kootenay.

“They were looking for a small community,” Wittmayer said. “They wanted something that had one or two-storey buildings with wide, vacant-looking streets – something that's obviously a twilight industry town.”

Wittmayer said he took the director and producer on a tour of the region in March and they agreed that Salmo fit the bill perfectly.

“Salmo had its heyday back with the Emerald Mine and with logging,” Wittmayer noted. “But now it's still a community and it's intact, but it's sort of declining. They like that look.”

Along with the main downtown area of Salmo and the old growth forest surrounding the village, they chose the Wildwood Trailer Park just outside the town — a place of poverty, destitution — as one of the main sets.

“It fit the location in the script perfectly,” Wittmayer noted. “He wanted something that was a working class, really underprivileged community.”

Other scenes in the movie will likely be filmed here in Nelson, including a shot with the former CP Rail station and a set at Central School.

“We're looking at schools here in Nelson for the abandoned school, which is (the doctor's) clinic,” Wittmayer noted. “So far they like Central School. They like the red-brick building and the rusticity of that.”

There are also plans to film in Sandon – which will be the actual town of Cold Rock.

“We would cut and match that with scenes from the community down in Salmo and some other areas,” Wittmayer noted. “With a little movie magic and cheating, you'll think it's all one town — Sandon, Salmo, a piece of Nelson put together in a montage sequence of scenes. It'll be a seamless presentation of a town called Cold Rock in the mountains.”

Wittmayer said Joanna Maratta, the Kootenay Columbia representative of the BC Film Commission was instrumental in bringing him on board and getting this film to come to the region.

“She tried hard to bring this film to Nelson,” Wittmayer noted. “She and the staff helped a lot in selling the Kootenays for this film.”

The Tall Man is being produced in Canada by Mind's Eye Entertainment (Faces in the Crowd with Milla Jovanvich) and distributed by Alliance Films, so Wittmayer said people can expect to see it on the big screen in theatres.

With a budget of $11 million and the artistic filmmaking Pascal Laugier is known for, Wittmayer expects to see something great.

“He's got some pretty novel ways of shooting and some good ideas,” he said. “I think it will be a good film. It won't be a Hollywood slick production. But I think you'll see some artistic stuff.”

And area residents can expect to see some of that $11 million injected into the local economy. “He (Laugier) really wants to work with the locations,” Wittmayer said. “He's very community-minded, in terms of going into these communities and hiring locally.

“I've been asked to hire local carpenters, painters and even extras. He's really wanting to get as much realism from the community as he can. He really wants to be inclusive.” Scott Sommerville, chief administrative officer from the Village of Salmo said that, although it was picked as a “run down mountain town,” Salmo is happy to have the filmmakers coming to town.

“I think it’s huge for the restaurants and all the hardware stores,” Sommerville said. “And I’ve always thought we have some interesting characters here in Salmo. We’re pretty excited about people getting jobs as extras. We have a bit of an artsy community in town with theatre groups. So I’m sure they’ll be lined up with their headshots.”