A summertime sizzler is about to hit the streets of Toronto

Alliance Communications is heating up this summer with the first of four Harlequin Romance 90-minute tv movies, Treacherous Beauties, which is ready to roll in Toronto early this month. Charles Jarrott will be directing stars Emma Samms, Catherine Oxenberg, Bruce Greenwood, Mark Humphrey and Tippy Hedren, with Jim Henshaw executive producing and Ian McDougall producing. Production manager is Laurie McLarty. The film is not yet scheduled for broadcast (on the CTV Television Network and cbs), but fall 1994 is the aim.

Next up is Another Woman, which will start shooting mid-month in Toronto. Late this month and mid-August respectively, A Change of Place and Fantasy Man will shoot somewhere in Europe. Casting is still underway for these productions. Each Harlequin pic has a $3.5 million budget.

Although these four are the only Harlequin mows confirmed, Alliance owns rights to all 16,000 titles and one could hazard a guess that a franchise may one day be in order.

Bloody good show

Blood ‘n’ Donuts producer Steve Hoban has orchestrated a whopping special effects deal on deferral, and not only may it be unprecedented in the Canadian film industry, it’s worth between $150,000 and $250,000. For a low-budget pic that started out with $350,000 in capital and about the same in deferrals, that’s not bad.

Morphing is the name of the game and there are four companies involved: l.a.-based efilm (Last Action Hero, Ghost) is formatting the film to digital and then back again; New York-based Parallax Graphics Systems is licensing the Matador software (The Crow); the Toronto branch of l.a.’s Silicon Graphics (Lucas Films) is providing the hardware; and Toronto’s own Spin Productions (Super Seven Lottery commercial) is taking care of digital compositing.

The idea started when Hoban approached Norm Stangl of Spin to discuss configurations for the film. The end result will be several minutes of digital special effects in the movie (not as insubstantial as you may think: Terminator 2 had about nine minutes). Hoban says all the companies wanted to work together anyway, and this was a stab at a dry run.

Nothing is free, and the payoff for Blood ‘n’ Donuts is a posting period lengthened by at least six weeks. At the most conservative rate, that’s a trade-off of $25,000 of time per week.

Jungleground set to roll

Norstar Entertainment is once again on the crime suspect movie trail, this time with Jungleground, a Canadian feature set to roll mid-month in Toronto with a budget of somewhere around $250,000. Director is music video-maker (and first-time feature filmmaker) Don Allen of Revolver Films. George Flak (Murder One) is producing and Roddy Piper stars in the lead as an undercover cop. The production is casting and hiring crew now.

The McMahon Machine

The fraternal team of director/writer Kevin and producer Michael McMahon (The Falls) are posting In the Reign of Twilight, a stylized documentary which was primarily shot in the Arctic and focuses on the impact American technology, particularly of the military kind, has had on the Inuit.

‘Some men don’t know how to hunt or how to build an igloo anymore, but there is a Lear jet parked nearby in the event of an emergency,’ says Michael.

The feature-length documentary was commissioned by Rudy Buttignol for the tvontario series The View From Here and will likely be broadcast early next winter.

In the meantime, the McMahons and their production company, Primitive Features, are aiming to start production in Toronto late this fall on Intelligence, a non-fiction Cyberspacial examination of the smarts. It’s not determined yet whether the doc will be targeted for tv or theatrical release.

Last but certainly not least is the tantalizingly titled The Pleasure Dome. Don’t get too excited, it’s a one-hour documentary look at Toronto’s SkyDome.

Lacewood has a Problem Child

Lacewood Productions of Ottawa is producing a $5.8 million, 13-episode animated series based on the John Ritter Hollywood flick, Problem Child, with Universal Cartoon Studios. Director is Lacewood vet Lee Williams, producer is Weldon Poapst and the music is by Edmund Eagan.

The deal follows on the heels of an agreement signed in April between the Ottawa animation house and MCA/Universal to produce the $5.4 million, 13-part series Monster Force. Lacewood president Sheldon Wiseman says the two deals have increased the company’s staff by approximately 150 people (from about 40).

Lacewood owns the product and shares distribution rights with Universal. Wiseman says Lacewood has ‘a number of projects in discussion’ with Universal, all animated and some aimed at a more mature, family market. Both projects are expected to air this fall.

Up their Alley

Back Alley Films (Talk 16) has a plethora of projects in development these days. First up, Talk 16 is on its way to becoming a tv drama series which director Adrienne Mitchell and producer Janis Lundman are developing with Alliance and the cbc.

The series has little to do with the feature documentary of the same name. Mitchell calls it ‘Seinfeld meets Dazed and Confused.’ Writer Andrew Ray Berzins (Blood ‘n’ Donuts) is working on the third script, which Mitchell says should be done by mid-month. A production order could be in place by September. Mitchell and Lundman are creative producers and will direct a few episodes.

Barbara Goudy’s short story Ninety Three Million Miles Away was optioned two months ago by Mitchell for a feature drama. She is currently looking for a writer and hoping to get Al McGee on side as story editor and possibly as producer.

Back Alley is also looking to get two half-hour dramas off the ground for Showcase Originals after a meeting with Audrey Cole, programming vice-president of the new all-drama specialty service, Showcase. No details yet. Even more mysterious is ‘another backdoor pilot’ for a two-hour film which Mitchell says she can’t reveal anything about for fear the concept will be lifted. Must be a good idea.

Revolving doors

The trek from 64 Jefferson Street to 65 Heward Avenue (which started with former ytv president Kevin Shea) has now been made by ytv publicist Ruth Dyer, who is moving over to Atlantis Communications to take on the newly created position of unit publicity manager. That puts the tally at 24 new employees for Atlantis since January, four of whom moved from ytv.

Northern lights

Cinefest, Sudbury’s annual international film festival, is set for Sept. 21-25 this year with two bonuses: cash awards for video-makers of $1,000 (top prize) and $500 (second prize) in narrative, documentary, experimental or music and dance categories. Also, the northern fest is mounting a retrospective of independent Quebec filmmakers.