Paradise city: Slash stops by Sudbury for movie filming

Legendary guitar player Slash, best known for his work with the hard rock band Guns N’ Roses, was in Sudbury last week to visit the set of a movie he is executive producing.

City Tourism and Culture manager Lara Fielding met with Saul Hudson (best known by his stage name, Slash) during his May 9 visit.

“He’s a legend,” Fielding told Sudbury.com, adding that Slash was keen to talk about everything film-related during his brief time in Sudbury, where the movie “Deathstalker” is being filmed.

Fielding met with Slash at Northern Ontario Film Studios, which is hosting several movie sets.

“He came in to see how the production was going,” she said. “We had the opportunity to sit down and talk to Slash and ask him some questions about filming and his interest in the horror genre.”

Slash’s notoriety and the calibre of people behind the movie are a testament “to the quality of films and the teams that come in and film in the north,” she said.

The city is on track to meet or exceed its pre-COVID number of productions, which was around 18 per year, she said, with three productions currently taking place in the Nickel City. In addition to “Deathstalker,” another horror movie is also being filmed and a post-apocalyptic television series is in production in Greater Sudbury.

The Film and Television Industry Alliance cites a movie called “Deathstalker II” as being in-production in Sudbury from April 17-May 24.

They describe the movie as follows: “Tasked with a quest by an all-seeing witch to uncover the true purpose of a magical amulet, a mighty but mysterious warrior known as Deathstalker finds himself at the center of a battle for the fate of the Kingdom. He’ll need to fight off hordes of monsters, evade vicious assassins and face his shadowy past head-on to stop a great evil and discover his true destiny.”

The movie is being directed by Steven Kostanski, of “Psycho Goreman” fame, and is a reboot of the low-budget 1980s movie series, which pays homage to Conan the Barbarian. A Kickstarter campaign for the movie has more information about the reboot effort. 

Kostanski has earned a reputation for featuring practical effects in his films, and the movie’s Kickstarter campaign promises the use of miniature and matte work.

Although best known for his work as a guitar player, Slash has branched out into film and television in recent years. A horror movie fan, he launched a horror production company, BerserkerGang, in recent months. Little has been published about the company to date, with “coming soon” appearing on its website. 

“I’ve always been a huge horror fan, especially going back to the days when horror movies actually scared the hell out of you,” Slash said in a statement published in Variety last year. 

“I want to get into the heart of the producing business so I can try and make movies that I’d like to see.”

Slash also served as executive producer on the 2022 movie “The Breach,” which was filmed in Parry Sound, and the Paramount+ television series “The Crow Girl,” which is currently in production in Bristol, England.

In addition to executive producing the “Deathstalker” movie, Slash helped create a comic book featuring the character for Vault Comics last year. A graphic novel is slated to be published later this year.

Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.