As The Diana Kilmury Story ­ Barna-Alper’s first foray into dramatic fare ­ airs next month in the u.s. on Turner Broadcasting (under the perhaps more confrontational moniker Mother Trucker), the 15-year-old company, long known for its docs, is forging ahead with a full slate of drama.

David Weaver, the company’s new head of drama and a former Ontario Film Development Corporation development officer, says the most ambitious project is a feature film or miniseries based on a prominent Canadian bestseller. Rights are still being locked for the book, the true story of a Westerner’s experiences in China during the cultural revolution.

Weaver envisions the project, which would total ‘$15 million, minimum,’ as a Canada/u.k. copro with a partner from the Far East.

Hugh Graham (the writer behind A Sudden Darkness and Vigilance) has been contracted to begin work on what is tentatively titled Murder 101, a $2 million to $3 million feature suggested by the company’s documentary The Tenure of Dr. Fabrikant. Valery Fabrikant is the engineering professor who gunned down three colleagues at Concordia University after having been denied tenure. The plan is to add a Canadian director and u.s. cast.

Raw, budgeted at $1 million to $2 million, is what Weaver calls a ‘very pitchable’ project inspired by the experiences of Toronto stripper Catherine Goldberg, the woman who fought city hall on the issue of lap dancing. There’s been ‘a glimmer of interest’ from the u.s. cable market and Weaver expects it could have a life on video.

On the series side, Telefilm Canada, British Columbia Film and the cbc have pitched development cash into DiVinci’s Inquest, a copro between Barna-Alper and Chris Haddock’s Vancouver-based Invisible Ink, Inc. The series, an hour-long, high-end drama about Vancouver’s resolute chief coroner, is written and created by Haddock, a former showrunner for MacGyver. Expected to be shot in b.c., Weaver says the project could be ‘a tent-pole series’ for the cbc with ‘enormous potential in foreign markets.’

The other series in development, one which may stand to gain from Sheila’s Canadian Television and Cable Production Fund, is a dramatic anthology in the vein of cbc’s For The Record. It’s envisioned that the series would pull noteworthy, contemporary stories that might not sustain an mow. ‘I can’t see any episode going above $700,000 to $800,000,’ says Weaver.

Calling it ‘a drama lab,’ Weaver says the company would consider handling the series similarly to its Discovery series The Body: Inside Stories. Barna-Alper produces half the episodes and farms out the rest to regional producers.

Weaver is anticipating building bridges with companies like Turner and Showtime during an l.a. junket in late October, and in November he’ll represent Barna-Alper on Telefilm’s Drama Immersion trip to the u.k.

Insight sets sights on Silver City

As production rolls on for Ready or Not, Toronto’s Insight Productions is in the process of codeveloping a one-hour dramatic/adventure/comedy family series with cbc and Disney Channel.

Penned by Bill Murtagh (a former story editor for My Secret Identity), Silver City tells the story of the O’Connor family circa 1897 as they make the cross-country trek from Halifax to Silver City, a Banff-like West Coast community.

‘It’s told from the perspective of nine-year-old twins, a boy and a girl,’ says Murtagh. Their lawyer father moves the clan to take up a new position with the railway.

Murtagh expects that ­ should the project go to series ­ exteriors may be shot in some western locale to add the mountain vistas so noticeably absent in southern Ontario.

Murtagh is also continuing development on Ward’s Island Weekly, a half-hour series set during wwii on one of the Toronto Islands.

Biker agent hits tinsel town

Say what you will about Americans, but it’s often much easier to get them on the phone. Sometimes they even pick it up themselves, magically lifting the caller over legions of media relations, communications and personal assistants. Jordan Stone, president of the newly launched, Toronto-based Jordan Stone Agency, even found it relatively easy to walk right up and say ‘Hi.’

After leaving his gig at the Canadian Film Centre a few months ago, Stone rounded up what he considered to be some of the best Canadian scripts around and decided to approach the biggest of bigwigs in l.a. He got on his bike, and he went there.

‘Everyone said, ‘Jordan, you can’t just go there and expect to meet with these people.’ ‘ But go he did, and meet he did, and he sat with creative execs from the likes of Universal, Touchstone, mgm, Columbia Pictures, New Regency, Rysher and Paramount.

The scripts in his bag were Arthur Newman’s high-concept biker film Leather (‘Mad Max meets Easy Rider’) and Gale Smallwood’s blue-collar outlaw picture Keeping Six (‘Leaving Las Vegas meets Bonnie and Clyde’).

Stone says Leather is getting a second reading at one of the ‘bigger’ u.s. studios, and he managed to get Keeping Six on an important desk at Roseanne’s Sand Dollar Productions. Never one to miss an opportunity, he also managed to get Keeping Six into Eric Stoltz’s hands while the actor attended the cfc’s festival bbq.

His next l.a. venture is scheduled to happen in a couple of months, and the latest addition to his roster of ‘fresh, new voices’ will be one or two of eight scripts from former advertising guy Shafik Benjamin. Stone’s also trying to hook up a deal for some scripts from Paul Quarrington (Whale Music).

One of the most important lessons Stone took from his first venture involved the fine art of The Pitch. He admits his first meeting ­ with mgm ­ was ‘a disaster’ until he realized what the suits really want to hear.

‘They’re serious and they have the money to get things done. They want to know about the story and the characters, the audience, and how it’s going to make them money. In five minutes I could teach what takes four days in a pitching workshop.’

One to watch

In anticipation of big deals for 1997, Ottawa’s Funbag Animation will be moving in November to another, bigger location which will triple its space. The ‘tooners recently forged a development deal with Disney tv for their kids’ series Old Goat.