Antonucci gears up to direct MTV series The Brothers Grunt

Vancouver: Danny Antonucci’s hair is standing just a little higher on end these days. The off-the-wall director at Vancouver’s on-the-edge animation studio, International Rocketship, got the go-ahead from MTV this month to begin production on a whopping 65 episodes of a new cartoon series through his recently formed production arm, A.K.A. Cartoon.

Entitled The Brothers Grunt, the series concerns six brothers – Frank, Perry, Tony, Bing, Dean and Sammy (named after Antonucci’s favorite crooners) – who wear Bermuda shorts and wing-tipped shoes and belong to a commune/monastery/cult run by the Gruntas Poobah. The action begins when Perry escapes through an underground tunnel and his five brothers are sent to bring him back before he is corrupted by the outside world.

The series will utilize subtitling because the brothers don’t speak English; in fact, they only grunt due to their cheese-induced constipation.

Antonucci says the series evolved from a Grunt bros station id he created for mtv last year. The American music video channel was so keen on the characters, it ordered the series and has already begun extensive merchandising on The Brothers Grunt. Each 10-minute episode follows a similar rock video/animated format fashioned by mtv’s other hit series, Beavis and Butthead.

Using traditional cel animation, Antonucci and his team, headed by producer Dennis Heaton, are currently scripting and boarding the episodes while madly getting quotes from Korea and Taiwan for animation and ink-and-paint contracts.

A somewhat flustered Antonucci, who just returned from meetings in New York, says: ‘I still don’t know quite how to take this success, it’s been such a whirlwind. I’m trying to deal with that whole machine of series television while still keeping it at my operating level.’

The Brothers Grunt is due to begin airing on mtv in the u.s. and throughout the rest of the world – with the exception of Canada – this July.

‘It’s a real shame that the series, even though all the creative is being done here, won’t be seen by Canadians,’ says Antonucci. ‘It’s been that way for most of Rocketship’s productions,’ he says. ‘We’re well known and accepted in the u.s. and in Europe, but in Canada, our home, we still can’t get on the air.’ Go figure.

Ready to fly

two major television movies, Firefrost and Glace Bay, which have labored in development for the last several years, are finally getting off the ground this month.

Firefrost is an mow being executive produced and produced by Brian McKeown of Howe Sound Films in association with Stephen DeNure of Alliance Communications. Toronto-based Marc Strange is the writer.

Set in Yellowknife and the high Arctic, Firefrost is the story of a 16-year-old Inuit boy who gets caught up in an ecological disaster and subsequently helps expose a government cover-up.

‘We’re really excited that almost all the roles will be played by Inuit actors,’ says McKeown, who is still finalizing the cast. ‘I just hope we can do a story that will depict the people of the North with love and respect.’

Production in Yellowknife, Taloyoak, n.w.t. and Vancouver begins March 21 with l.a.-based, Emmy award-winning Canadian director David Greene (Roots, Small Sacrifices, Rich Man Poor Man) at the helm. Harold Tichenor of Crescent Films will take supervising producer credits.

Producer Mort Ransen of Ranfilm Productions will be finding it harder and harder these days to catch a ferry back to his home on Saltspring Island. After receiving confirmation this month on a major casting coup, his theatrical feature Glace Bay was propelled forward into late spring production.

British actress Helena Bonham Carter of A Room With A View and Howards End fame signed on for the lead role in this film about life in a small Cape Breton mining community during the early fifties. The original story, scripted by Cape Breton writer Sheldon Curry and told entirely from a woman’s point of view, particularly appealed to Bonham Carter, who is currently in England completing work on a Francis Ford Coppola film directed by Kenneth Branagh.

‘It really is a gem of a woman’s role,’ says Ransen. ‘Even though the film is set against the backdrop of death and dying through mining accidents, there’s still a lot of humor and light in the writing. And it’s the first time this kind of story has ever been told from a woman’s perspective – especially one who has never even entered a mine.’

Budgeted in the $3 million to $4 million range, Glace Bay has received funding assistance from all three National Film Board offices and will be coproduced with Chris Zimmer of Imagex in Halifax.

Filming in Glace Bay, Cape Breton is scheduled to begin in late May.

Spaced out

life over at the B.C. Film Commission has been humming at a frantic pace ever since the earthquake in l.a. The latest reports estimate over 35% of the city’s studio space has been condemned as a result of last month’s disaster. Disney Studios was hit hard, Sony’s MGM Studios reported significant damage, while Fox lucked out with no damage at all.

Mark DesRochers, manager of production/location services at the commission, says he’s swamped with requests from production companies and is scrambling for more studio space. ‘Normally at this time of year it’s primarily tv pilots that we’re servicing, but this year it’s all major features that we’re dealing with.’

Among the new features seriously considering Vancouver is Dorothy Day, a story about a remarkable woman who ran a Catholic mission in New York during the Depression. It’s a dynamite script, and no doubt with the shortage of great female roles coming out of Hollywood, this film, produced by Bill Finnigan (The Fabulous Baker Boys) of Outlaw Pictures will be much sought after by all the major actresses hungering for meatier roles.

Executives from Disney were also in Vancouver scouting for locations to film The Nancy Kerrigan Story. Now there’s a big surprise – not that they’re doing it, but that it took them so long to get here. Following the David Koresh/Waco, Tex. disaster, Hollywood executives were into second drafts of that script before the flames had even died down.

And Pacific Motion Pictures won’t have much spare time on its hands now that the Joan Rivers story, Life After Death, has been confirmed to shoot here. Apparently the mow, produced by Merrill Karpf of l.a.-based Davis Entertainment Television, is a location manager’s nightmare. pmp will have only two weeks to prep and the script calls for over 60 locations.