Omni’s Discovery entry wins race

while its Odyssey hits end of road

Vancouver: Michael Chechik, president of Omni Film Productions, received good news and bad news this month. The good news was that Hi-Tech Culture, Omni’s entry in the cybertech war of the series raging on The Discovery Channel, came out on top in the audience ratings, which means the half-hour series, produced by Brian Hamilton and Terry McEvoy, has been ordered for a full season of 13 episodes.

The bad news is that Omni’s innovative dramatic series, The Odyssey, after completing its third year of production, was not renewed for a fourth season by its Canadian broadcaster, cbc.

Other projects in the works at Omni include a preschool animated series, The Short Tree And Bird That Could Not Sing, from the pen of playwright Dennis Foon, which Omni hopes to shoot a pilot for this summer.

Champions of the Wild is a human-interest/wildlife cross about outstanding Canadians who have dedicated their lives to wildlife conservation. Inspired by Omni’s documentary film Killer Whales in the Wild about a husband and wife research team, the series hopeful has tweaked interest at both Global and Discovery.

And for sports fans, Omni has Hockey Hall of Fame Legends, a series being coproduced with Opus Productions and Waterstreet Pictures, which it hopes will prove to be the definitive history of Canada’s national obsession.

At the Forefront

Forefront Productions will be the Vancouver production company to watch over the next six months. Word has it the dynamic female foursome who head up the concern have just received a loan of roughly $250,000 from the Federal Business Development Bank’s Cultural Initiatives Development Fund to capitalize their company.

Look for the emergence of another new local distribution entity.

Doggone

Filmmaker Anne Marie Fleming’s feature film debut, Dog Days, was planned for production this summer, but apparently hit the skids this month after a disagreement with the producers over rumored ‘unrealistic demands’ – on whose part we’re not sure.

Going, going, gone

Pacific Motion Pictures’ first in-house developed feature project, Magic In the Water (formerly titled Glenorky), has captured the attention of distributors both north and south of the border.

Word has it that after TriStar picked up the rights to the family comedy/drama, a virtual bidding war amongst Canadian distributors ensued, with Peter Simpson’s Norstar Releasing picking up the Canadian theatrical and video rights for a substantial sum ($350,000).

pmp has wisely retained Canadian broadcast rights to sell off at a future date.

And in other distribution news, John Curtis and Rob Straight of Everest Entertainment are looking at expanding their distribution operation. The odd couple are currently in discussions with Toronto-based Paul Gardner (formerly a vice-president at Cineplex, now running his own distribution company, Renaissance Pictures) about a possible partnership arrangement.

Curtis says Gardner brings an understanding of the theatrical market and access to Telefilm Canada’s Distribution Fund.

Drawing high interest

Producer Nick Orchard and Rick Drew’s series Drawn Together is coming together, finally.

The series about a single mother working in an animation studio was created in partnership with cartoonist Lynn Johnston of For Better or For Worse fame. Now, after many months in development with WIC Western International Communications but no move towards production, the project has attracted the attention of new West Coast distributor TSC Shannock.

Shannock picked up the series this month, kicking in some cash and helping the producers put together the last third of the budget for series production.

Says Orchard: ‘I’m delighted we at last have a local distributor with cash that is actually willing to put money into productions and that appears to be very interested in our company and slate of projects.’

Shannock has also expressed interest in developing The Suspect, a suspense thriller based on the novel by Vancouver author L.R. Wright.

The Suspect, which has been optioned numerous times, was with Rob MacLean of Northwood Productions before Orchard picked it up. Hopefully, it gets made this time.

Also on the boards at Orchard’s Soapbox Productions is The Pitch, a ‘quirky thriller’ now in its third draft. The feature/mow is being created by actors-cum-writers Pat Bermel and Evan Tyler of Freedom Four Productions, who have regular day jobs as cops on The Commish.

Summerland, a family drama based on the lives of the early pioneers who settled in the Okanagan Valley of b.c. is a series hopeful being developed and scripted by writers Drew and Ian Weir.

And finally there’s Dead Serious, a feature film based on the successful stage play of the same name by playwright and local actor Doug Greenall. The script, which several readers around town deemed ‘fabulous,’ is a thriller set in a fishing lodge where a dead body shows up, giving guests something more to worry about than fresh bait.