Word has it that Atom Egoyan’s much-touted entry into Hollywood in the form of the film Dead Sleep for Warner Bros./Icon Productions is a no-go. Insiders hint that Egoyan wasn’t willing to give up the control and/or adjust to the studio’s timeline for shooting the film.

His assistant Simone Urdl says, ‘There are no hard feelings. It had been three years since his last film, Exotica, and he wanted to get going on his new project, The Sweet Hereafter. When he was asked to be on the jury at Cannes, it provided a good opportunity for him to announce it.’

The Sweet Hereafter is a script Egoyan adapted from a novel by American writer Russell Banks. The story centers on how the tragedy of a school bus crash in a small town echoes throughout the community.

Producer Camelia Frieberg says the film is expected to shoot in Ontario in late October. A second unit may film in b.c. or the Yukon.

Frieberg explains the fizzling out of Dead Sleep by saying, ‘The script for The Sweet Hereafter is ready and we wanted to just go ahead with it without compromising. Atom is excited about doing this now. Hollywood will always be there.’

Meanwhile, Egoyan is doing a six-day shoot for the Rhombus Media project featuring cellist Yo Yo Ma. The one-hour segment is part of a larger series featuring Ma called Inspired By Bach.

Fortunes, misfortunes and fairies

David Webb, who recently completed ad duties on the Hugh Grant vehicle Extreme Measures, has teamed up with Steve Wakefield to produce Lotto-Boy, a feature film with director Tom Quinn. Webb says the ‘small film’ is about ‘luck, life’s fortunes and misfortunes.’

The story, written by Bob Mandel, centers on two people who are involved in a botched murder-suicide and have to dispose of a body. Then one of them wins a lottery.

‘It’s a wild ride,’ says Webb. ‘It’s sort of alternative cinema, but it’s not made for the elite. It’s accessible.’

The film is currently in development and one or two American actors are expected to be cast.

In other production news, The Fairy Godmother with producing company the Bubble Factory is set to start shooting in and around Toronto in July.

Michael Ritchie directs the children’s comedy, which features Martin Short in the role of the fairy godmother and Mara Wilson as the child who makes a wish.

The film, scripted by Jeff Rothberg, is being produced by Michael S. Glick and pmed by Brian Campbell. Locations for the shoot will include Toronto’s Elgin Theatre.

Also, Wesley Snipes is slated to come to Toronto to star in the Warner Bros. feature Executive Privilege. Director is Dwight Little and pm is Nick Gray.

Rabid dogs

Producer Sandra Cunningham and writer/director John L’Ecuyer (Curtis’s Charm) have formed a new production company called The East Side Film Company. The company’s first project will be The Ultimate Good Luck, an adaptation of the novel by 1996 Pulitzer and Pen/Faulkner award-winning author Richard Ford.

The film, which l’Ecuyer describes as a ‘multimillion-dollar project,’ is set to shoot in 1997. Other upcoming projects, he says, will be based on other literary properties and original scripts.

For smaller independent films, L’Ecuyer and Cunningham are focusing on their Rabid Dog Films company, which produced Curtis’s Charm.

‘We want to give support to angry young film students with something to say,’ says L’Ecuyer. ‘These are films that are in the $150,000 to $750,000 range. The aim is to champion new filmmakers without that big company structure to help people with their first film.’

Rabid Dog will be accepting scripts in January 1997.

Says Cunningham: ‘You can’t keep making just small-budget films like Curtis’s Charm. You run out of favors. You have to move on and make bigger films that will help support your efforts to make smaller films with new filmmakers.’

and CBC Cats

The cbc series title that was once Dead Woman Kept 73 Cats has gone through several reincarnations. First, it was News at 11:00, then 1500 Buried Alive. Next was Dead Cats followed by the current title, The News Room. ‘Dead Woman Kept 73 Cats and 1500 Buried Alive sounded too strange when you answered the phone,’ says series producer Peter Meyboom. ‘News at 11:00 just didn’t stick.’

The half-hour series is set in a tumultuous tv newsroom and features an ensemble cast. It’s a comedy, says Meyboom, but ‘not really. It’s very different, shot with a hand-held camera with cinematographer Joan Hutton. There’s no laugh track. It’s about these mostly jaded people in the newsroom – it’s dry, ironic. But it has the look of a serious documentary.’

The series, to air in the fall on cbc, also features some surprising Canadian guests playing themselves: Cynthia Dale, Daniel Richler, Hugh Segal and Linda McQuaid.

In other cbc production news, Giant Mine, the story of the 1992 mine disaster in Yellowknife, has just finished production in Kirkland Lake and Toronto. Production on The Peacekeepers, about Canadian peacekeepers in Croatia, produced by David Barlow, begins this summer.

Murderous coproduction being plotted

Principal photography is underway for the television movie The Morrison Murders in Toronto. Developed by Cosgrove/Meurer Productions and Alliance Communications, the film will air on the USA Network and will be produced and distributed by Alliance.

The Morrison Murders stars John Corbett (Northern Exposure), Jonathan Scarfe (Madison, Outer Limits) and Gordon Clapp (NYPD Blue) and involves the true story of two brothers who unite to find their parents’ killer until the older sibling finds his brother is the murderer.

‘Our goal with this movie is to investigate the true crime genre with a fresh milieu and a usa style, while retaining strong elements of a life-and-death family drama,’ says Laurie Pozmantier, executive vp of Alliance Television.

Shipwrecks offer treasures for CineNova

Cinenova Productions, a multimedia company with a focus on new-form documentaries, will soon go into production with Shipwreck!, a series on famous shipwrecks expected to make it to television in 1997.

The company’s first foray into the nautical world was Shipwreck: The Mystery of the Edmund Fitzgerald, a $2 million documentary that recently won the Gold Camera Award at the U.S. International Film and Video Festival and the Silver Award at the Houston World Festival.

Shipwreck! the series, says CineNova chairman and ceo David Lint, has no confirmed broadcaster because, ‘There’s such an interest, that there are competitive bids for it.’

CineNova is also in post-production with Great Adventures of the 20th Century, a series on both heroic and tragic stories of contemporary adventurers worldwide, that will air this fall on Global.

Personnel change

Louise Leger is leaving Playback. Mary Ellen Armstrong will be taking over the helm of Ontario Scene.