Vancouver: In the midst of a shopping spree in which Vancouver’s Motion Works is buying smaller media companies, the controversial cd-rom producer has forged a joint venture with Crescent Entertainment, a West Coast film company.

The two companies are collaborating on an interactive cd-rom movie tentatively titled Ghost in the Dark, says Motion Works chair, president and ceo John Hickman. Using film noire stylings, Ghost’s story involves a murder victim whose spirit travels back in time to solve his own murder.

Users will respond to options presented in live-action clips, which in turn drive the game.

Unlike the string of companies that have been absorbed by Motion Works in its aggressive growth plan, Crescent will remain an independent project partner, according to Jayme Pfahl. Pfahl is a partner in Crescent and a coproducer of Ghost along with colleague Harold Tichenor and Hickman’s wife Pia Southam Hickman (who is also driving Citytv’s bid for a Vancouver station).

Pfahl says the 50/50 project ­ valued between $800,000 to $1 million before distribution ­ is a new field for both companies. ‘(Motion Works) have their fingers in cd-rom production and we have our fingers in film production. There are parallels and differences between multimedia and film production and we have been able to bring the companies together to explore new avenues.’

Currently in draft script form, Ghost is tentatively scheduled for shooting in April or May and product could be on the shelves as early as October pending financing and distribution, say producers.

While it dabbles in film, Motion Works ­ which trades on the Vancouver Stock Exchange and nasdaq in the u.s. ­ has been gathering other media companies in a bid to implement what Hickman calls a New Media Strategy.

That plan has both multimedia competitors and stock analysts baffled.

In December, Hickman bought Toronto graphics and communications house Dreadnaught Design and Vancouver-based Imagineer.com Information Services, which produces four Internet magazine titles. In November, he acquired 15 Internet publications in development and appointed Canadian publishing consultant Robert MacDonald as president of Motion Works Publishing. In October, the parent company acquired Vancouver’s Ferocious Fish Productions, a company that specializes in sound and audio post-production.

Hickman says he’s currently negotiating the purchase of a Toronto publisher of books and magazines and a u.s. producer of commercials and industrial films.

The goal, he says, is to bring traditional media into the digital era, which means the acquisitions will continue to ply their traditional skills while they work to adapt to cd-rom and Internet applications.

Hickman also wants to create a network of boutique companies ­ an organization he calls a ‘studio of media making.’ He describes his consolidation of companies as a microscopic parallel to the amalgamations of media giants such as Disney, Viacom and Time Warner.

According to the Hickman vision: ‘Development of creative content has the highest competitive value’ in a multimedia world and ‘content is best created in ‘cottage-industry,’ decentralized settings.’

Superior content, Hickman says, will guarantee Motion Works’ market share.

And in a major departure from the film and television industry, Hickman says he is not interested in distribution, convinced that the egalitarian nature of the Internet eliminates the bottleneck of distribution of the entertainment business.

Outsiders regard the Hickman strategy as odd. The acquisitions have been secured solely by issuing stock, in the neighborhood of five million shares in the past 13 months.

Vancouver stock analyst Jason Zandberg of Pacific International Securities says the Motion Works model d’esn’t make a lot of sense. ‘(The company) d’esn’t have the distribution and it d’esn’t add anything to these little companies,’ he says. ‘Motion Works needs to secure distribution first, then get the talent. Offering shares to buy these companies is a weak strategy.’

Zandberg is also concerned about Hickman paying debt and payroll with shares, which traded at 96 cents on Jan. 19, down from a 52-week high of $1.70. (Motion Works, under previous manager Randy McCallum, reached a share price of $6.50 in 1993.)

Under Hickman’s stewardship since September 1994, Motion Works has increased annual revenue from $2 million to $10 million, which reflects the consolidated revenues of the acquisitions rather than growth in Motion Works’ original cd-rom business, says Zandberg. Motion Works now has about 90 employees.

Vancouverite Reid Myroniuk, a partner at seven-month-old cd-rom competitor THE Media Communications, says there is a lot of confusion about Motion Works. ‘A lot of people are talking about the (Motion Works) hype and questioning whether it’s meant to stimulate stock prices. We’re all sitting on our hands waiting to see what they’ll do.

‘We’ve danced with them,’ Myroniuk adds, referring to earlier overtures from Hickman, ‘but the deal didn’t come together.’

Motion Works’ most recent successes have come from the production of educational cd-roms including Blue Tortoise (for Corel Corporation) and Counting on Frank (for EA Kids). In November, it signed a deal with Connecticut-based MacMillan/McGraw-Hill School Division to develop prototypes for a series of interactive multimedia education products for u.s. primary schools.