$200 mil budget for Nolan’s Inception?

According to The Calgary Sun (via SlashFilm, by way of First Showing), “a significant portion of the $200-million movie will be shot in Kananaskis,” a district west of Calgary, Alberta, in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. [If the $200 mil cited is in Canadian dollars, then that would convert to around $175 mil US.]

Nolan scouted nearby foothills and mountainous areas by helicopter and is said to have chosen Fortress Mountain as the main Alberta location…

Inception will join a long list of award-winning films such as Brokeback Mountain, Unforgiven and Legends of the Fall that have been made or partly shot in Alberta… It will be the first big-budget American movie shot in Alberta since the Brad Pitt flick The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford in 2005.

The insider said Inception will employ hundreds, if not thousands, of local film workers starting this summer when construction on the elaborate set is due to begin.

(Canadian Rocky Mountains, Kananaskis country: Walking Fortress ridge; view of Fortress mountain and Fortress lake below.)

Click to enlarge the picasaweb shot above. Inception’s release date is 13 months away. That’s a long time to obsess, so try not to start carving replicas of Fortress Mountain in mounds of mashed potatoes and freaking out your family at the dinner table.

Nolanfans.com says other locations for Inception include Los Angeles, London, Tokyo, Paris, to Tangiers, Morocco. Global scope for a movie said to be “set within the architecture of the mind.”