Montreal: American movie legend Marlon Brando heads a stellar cast in Free Money, a dark comedy a la Fargo from Filmline International and producer Nicolas Clermont. The 35-day shoot is underway in Montreal and small-town Quebec and goes through to Oct. 10.

Brando plays ‘The Swede,’ a prison warden, to Donald Sutherland’s judge character. Between them, the two men hold a tight grip over a small town located somewhere in Minnesota. Charlie Sheen plays a crook who marries one of the warden’s identical twin daughters and Mira Sorvino is cast as an f.b.i. agent who also happens to be the judge’s daughter.

Director Yves Simoneau has come a long way, traveling the world and deepening his craft, says Clermont. ‘He’s terrific and the actors love him.’ The director’s most recent project was Intensity, a miniseries broadcast to good reviews on Fox.

Alec Baldwin, Patrick Swayze and Tia Carrere make cameo appearances and are joined by talented Quebec actors Remy Girard, Jean Pierre Bergeron, Marie Tifo, Dorothee Berryman and Roy Dupuis. Casting is by Elite Productions, which handled a dicey search for The Swede’s twin daughters as well as a photo double of Brando.

Many other homegrown talents are on the stcvq shoot including dop David Franco (The Assignment), production designer Michel Proulx and pm Mario Nadeau. The delegate producer is Richard Lalonde.

Clermont says Filmline has held back on u.s. distribution while MDP Worldwide, Mark Damon’s company, has international and Malofilm Distribution has the Canadian rights. Free Money is budgeted at $22 million.

*Stone Coats talk at WFF

Kinatek producer Stephanie Wise and director/writer Rolf Schrader flew in from Calgary for the Montreal World Film Festival determined to sell their first feature Stone Coats. The $60,000 film was shot in 40-below weather on location in Calgary this winter and tells a highly realistic, edgy story of street kids who literally start to disappear.

Things seemed to fall into place rather smoothly. Not only did the festival print actually arrive in time – ‘It was flown in one hour before the screening,’ says Wise – but several u.s. indie and art house distributors screened the film and ‘told us they loved it.’

As for Canada, the filmmakers are contemplating a benefit screening program for the many nonprofit and community groups which work on behalf of street kids.

The movie uses real street kids, prostitutes, gang leaders and bottle pickers to help with the narration, says director Schrader, 38.

As for the name, Stone Coats is the winter god in Seneca lore, a terrible character believed to have consumed the warriors who never returned from battles and hunting expeditions.

‘Within the story the kids are divided into two groups in terms of what they think is happening,’ says Schrader. ‘One of the groups thinks it’s a crazed maniacal gang leader who’s killing the kids to increase his turf in the downtown core. The other group believes it’s actually a Wetiko, another subhuman, cannibalistic creature from Sandy Lake lore.’

Schrader says he’s on a roll and hopes to conclude some business at both the Toronto and Vancouver festivals.

Stone Coats was financed with private money, although Telefilm Canada kicked in about $25,000 for a 35mm blowup.

*Kingsborough to Kenya

Kingsborough Greenlight Pictures president John Buchanan has just returned from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and the Shabba Game Reserve, the primary location for the company’s next feature film To Walk With Lions.

Buchanan met with Kenya’s minister of information and broadcasting Johnstone Makau and announced a Feb. 1 startup for the us$9-million, 40- to 45-day shoot. ‘It’s a real Kenyan story and they want to see it done,’ he says.

To Walk With Lions is based on the lives of Kenyan wildlife conservationists George Adamson and Tony Fitzjohn. The late Adamson was devoted to reintegrating lions into the wilderness while Fitzjohn worked with the almost never seen African leopard.

The narrative chronicles the battle in Kenya between conservationists and poachers, and Buchanan says the story has a happy ending because finally the Kenyan government opted for adventure tourism rather than the bloody poaching industry.

John McKenzie (Unman Wittering & Zigo, The Long Good Friday, The Fourth Protocol) will direct with Richard Harris (Unforgiven, Patriot Games) and Sean Bean (Anna Karenina, Golden Eye) in the leading roles. Montreal ex-pat Jaime Brown is the u.k. coproducer.

In Kenya, Buchanan cut a great deal with the Sarova Shabba Lodge, which is making a significant investment via accommodations and office services in both Nairobi and the national reserve.

On a June trip, Buchanan hired an investment banker in Nairobi and by the time this one is done, he says it’s likely the production will have ‘a Kenyan investor group in for about 20% of the budget.’

‘That’s kind of a first,’ says Kingsborough’s exec producer. ‘There’s never been a Kenyan investor group in movies before.’

A story in the Aug. 22 issue of the Kenya Times reported the government in Kenya plans to cut red tape for filmmakers, lower the tax on imported equipment and form a bona fide film commission. Minister Makau went on to say the publicity from To Walk With Lions will boost the country’s tourism industry in the same way Out of Africa led to a boom in the mid-’80s.

As for the so-called tribal violence reported recently in Kenya, Buchanan says, ‘It’s an isolated incidentÉbut tourists are now canceling in droves. It’s far more dangerous to be in south central l.a. than it is in Kenya.’

The Montreal house is one of the country’s most active feature producers, having just wrapped Richard Trevor’s atmospheric thriller Out of Control and shooting continuing to Sept. 9 on the Isle of Man on the Canada/u.k. copro remake of Treasure Island, directed and written by Peter Rowe (Salt Water Moose, Lost!).

Out of Control stars Sean Young and Tom Conti in a twisted tale a la Body Heat about a woman refuged in a small town on the run from a murderous criminal.

Pieter Kroonenburg and Julie Allan along with the u.k.’s Harry Alan Towers are the producers on the us$4.5-million shoot. Fries-Schultz has foreign rights. Canada remains unsold.

Treasure Island, based on the beloved Robert Louis Stevenson classic, stars Oscar winner Jack Palance (Batman, City Slickers) as the notorious peg-legged pirate Captain Long John Silver. Kevin Zegers (Air Bud, Nico the Unicorn) is young Jim Hawkins and Patrick Bergin is the old and doomed seafaring Captain Billy Bones.

Kroonenburg says the Isle of Man location is sensational. The old inn used in the film actually belonged to the real Fletcher Christian of Mutiny on the Bounty Fame and the film’s wooden pirate ship is the same ship used in Cutthroat Island starring Geena Davis.

Also featured are Cody Palance, Malcolm Stoddard as the pirate Blind Pew, Christopher Benjamin, David Robb and the excellent Walter Sparrow (The Secret Garden) as the treasure-crazed Ben Gunn.

Quebec craft credits go to line producer Helene Boulay, pm Roch Mineau, production designer Charles Boulay, art director Steeve Henry, costume designer Claire Nadon and dop Marc Charlebois.

Trade Wind Entertainment of l.a. has foreign rights. Canadian rights remain unassigned.

Kingsborough has already wrapped two family features this year, Rodney Gibbons’ family drama Owd Bob and Graeme Campbell’s Nico the Unicorn.

*Trinome moves up

Montreal’s Trinome-Inter is taping 26 half-hours of Metier policier, a new primetime police reality show commissioned by Television Quatre Saisons.

Trinome vp Jean Tourangeau, the show’s content producer, says the show isn’t just another Cops but actually follows the weekly dealings of four police officers on their beat as well as special team operations including detectives with the sexual assault unit and the swat or technical squad.

‘We are going to show things that have never been seen in Quebec,’ says Tourangeau.

Footage includes real interrogations of ‘masked’ suspects and secret swat busts. ‘Everything is shot on Betacam sp. On certain shoots we had two cameras. When the technical [swat] squad hits a house it’s not an easy thing and security is an issue. There’s always danger,’ he says.

Considering the subject matter, the producers decided to pass on sponsors for the series but have their hands full with lawyers, for themselves, for tqs and for the Montreal police.

Pierre Blais is series director. Joel Quesnel is the dop, Stephane Olivier is editing and Pierre-Paul Lariviere is the producer. Senior police officer Michel Beaudin, who’s worked on all the Quebec cop shows including 10-07 l’Affaire Kafka, Jasmine and Omerta, is the consultant.

Metier Policier is budgeted at $900,000 with ctcpf money and both tax credits. It started taping in June and goes to February.

tqs has also picked up 78 15-minute episodes of Pripe et Pouille and 65 episodes of the kiddie workout show Infanforme, two original Canal Famille children’s series produced by Trinome.

Trinome’s ’97 production lineup includes 37 new half-hours of the young adult docudrama Pignon sur rue iii. The Tele-Quebec series chronicles the big-city existence of six 20-somethings who have moved here from the regions and live together in a boarding house. The $1-million series shoots from mid-August through to May with funding from the broadcaster, Telefilm and the ctcpf Licence Fee Program. Blais and Tourangeau are producing. Denys Lortie is the director and Isabelle Massicotte is editing.

*Upcoming Shoots

Among the stcvq starts scheduled for the fall is C’t’a ton tour Laura Cadieux, a feature film adapted from the Michel Tremblay play for the big screen by one of Quebec’s leading stage directors, Denise Filiatrault. Denise Robert of Cinemaginaire (Le Siege de l’ame) is producing for a mid-September start date.

Max Films producer Roger Frappier has two features in preproduction for September starts, Manon Briand’s Paradoxe and Denis Villeneuve’s Simone en 1997. Both young directors worked on Cosmos, a major prize winner at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. Max Films Television, headed by Pierre Laberge, is prepping the four-hour Canada/France miniseries Une Voix en Or.

New film action to come includes the Cinar Films family series Lassie ii, seen in the u.s. on cable channel Animal Planet and produced by Patricia Lavoie; Les Etats d’absence, a feature from Films de l’autre, directed by Michka Saal and produced by Janine Gagne; the sda/Films 13 feature Apres toutÉet meme plus, prolific French director Claude Lelouch’s latest romance adventure; and Allegro Films’ Babel, a $19-million coproduction with France’s Ima Films from director Gerard Pullicino. Jacques Methe, Allegro’s new topper, and Georges Benayoun are producing Babel, slated to begin principal photography in November and go through to February ’98.