Montreal: The new spring season is in full bloom at Cinar Films.

Following the announcement that Cinar and Bernard Zukerman Productions of Toronto will begin filming May 9 on the $8 million four-hour miniseries Million Dollar Babies, Cinar revealed that it has filed an application to list its common shares on the nasdaq national market in the u.s.

Cinar chairman and ceo Micheline Charest says the nasdaq listing will help the company broaden its investor base, particularly in the u.s. where it raised almost 40% of its production revenues in 1993.

In September, Cinar successfully completed an initial public share offering, selling 2.5 million common shares at a unit price of $5.50 for total proceeds of $13.75 million. Its shares are listed on the Montreal and Toronto stock exchanges under the cif symbol.

The newfound cash has added muscle to Cinar’s 1994 production slate – an unprecedented five television series, a miniseries and a tv pilot for a major animated series. The projects represent combined budgets of $42.5 million, a 64% increase over 1993 production spending. Cinar’s share of the 1994 activity is $24.8 million, up 31% over last year.

Topping the slate is Million Dollar Babies, which has been licensed to cbc in Canada and cbs in the u.s. According to the producers, the deal with cbs marks the first time an American network has provided a front-end licence for a fully Canadian miniseries.

Based on a screenplay from prolific Canadian writer Suzette Couture, Million Dollars Babies recounts the true life tragedy of the Dionne quintuplets. The miniseries stars u.s. actor Beau Bridges and Quebec actors Remy Girard and Roy Dupuis and will be directed by Montreal-based Christian Duguay (Snowbound, Adrift, Scanners iii). Principal photography begins May 9 in Montreal and runs through to mid-September.

‘It was the quality of Suzette Couture’s script, the uniqueness of the story and my track record with cbc and the American networks, that allowed the deal to come together,’ says Zukerman.

Zukerman and Couture combined on the hugely successful cbc productions Love and Hate, which ran to the top of the ratings on nbc with a 16-plus share, and Conspiracy of Silence, a hard-hitting story of racism, murder and police cover-up.

Million Dollar Babies is a Quebec/Ontario coproduction with financing from cbc, cbs, the Quebec tax credit program, the Ontario Film Development Corporation, Cinar and the federal tax shelter, says Cinar president Ron Weinberg, who adds the production is under evaluation at Telefilm Canada. As it stands, fully 80% of the production financing is in place.

‘The important thing in making this proposal work was finding someone who could write a script and make it come alive, and a producer with a solid track record of success in miniseries, which is how we came to work with Bernie and Suzette,’ says Weinberg. ‘After reading the script, cbs said they wanted to pursue a deal. The only thing they required was some casting approval. We (the Canadian producers) proposed Beau Bridges and they (cbs) said yes.’

According to Weinberg, the package was represented and brokered to cbs’ Jeff Sagansky by Ralph Zimmerman of Great North Artists Management.

Distribution rights

Cinar holds the worldwide distribution rights to Million Dollar Babies, including subsequent windows in both the u.s. and Canada. The production will be previewed for presales at next month’s mip-tv.

Included in Cinar’s 1994 production slate are four international coproductions, among them the Canada/France animated series The Busy World of Richard Scarry. Produced in association with Paramount Pictures and Germany’s Betafilm, with financing from Telefilm, the Richard Scarry series has been sold to 53 countries. It is seen on Family Channel in Canada and premiered March 9 on Showtime in the u.s.

Also in production is the fourth season – 52 episodes in all – of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, a spooky-tales anthology with financing from Nickelodeon and ytv; 26 new episodes of The New Adventures of the Intrepids, a coproduction with France’s Marathon Productions that’s currently in front of the cameras in Paris, with shooting planned throughout the summer in Montreal and Budapest; 13 new animated half-hours of The Papa Beaver Stories, coproduced with France’s gmt and Typhoon and based on the Editions Flammarion books Les Histoires du Pere Castor; and 26 half-hours of a new animated comedy series called Robinson Sucroe, coproduced with France Animation in association with bbc and Ravensburger. French broadcasters include Canal Plus and France 2.

Cinar has also announced that hbo and the CTV Television Network have licensed the pilot for an animated series called The Little Lulu Show. It will be produced in association with Western Publishing.

Based on the late Marjorie Henderson Buell’s original 1935 comic strip, everybody’s favorite little girl, Lulu, does a brand new standup comedy routine in this much anticipated pilot with the great title, The Trouble with Boys. Additional episodes are planned for 1995.

In its library, Cinar has 25 original tv series, 19 via international coproductions, making up 369 half-hours with total budgets in excess of $115 million. It owns and operates Crayon Animation, an animation studio, and the Cinar Studio Centre, a post-production and sound recording facility.