With the tv movie Wild Geese – Stornoway Productions’ first dramatic project and a coproduction with Sarrazin/Couture Productions for Baton – expected to head into production later this year, Stornoway is adding the dramatic expertise of executive producer Michael Klein to its roster. Klein produced Nancy Drew and was executive in charge of production on Jake and the Kid.

One of the projects Klein is spinning for Stornoway is Mayhem, a series of mystery thrillers based on characters created by Canadian novelist J. Robert James. The series of mows, probably six of them, will ring in somewhere near $4 million each and will be shot in France with a European, likely French, coproducer. The novels feature a German officer and a French detective who solve crimes in German-occupied Paris.

Meanwhile, Klein is not abandoning his own company, Endeavor. There are several projects in development with writer/producer Laura Phillips, another Jake and the Kid vet.

For the kids, there’s a half-hour Canada/France copro series called Einstein Academy, an X-Files-esque romp for the 12-and-under set featuring a school for kids with psychic abilities.

For older viewers there’s a primetime drama series called Caught in the Act, the continuing story of a 29-year-old former Canadian child star (she was Maggie of the popular series Maggie & The Moose, circa 1974) who’s trying to revive an acting career while waitressing in an l.a. cafe owned by an rcmp consultant.

Endeavor also has a feature in the works. Entitled The Last Place on Earth (another Phillips original), it’s a comedy about Robin, a young woman unlucky enough to fall victim to a fabulously inept Canadian Witness Protection Program.

On the first day of her brand new dream job – general manager of a grand luxury hotel – she witnesses a mob hit and ends up running The Crashsite Cottages ‘N Cafe, a monument to a perpetually underrated and overshadowed ufo crash site in the bustling metropolis of Kneecap, Sask., population 248. There’s intrigue, romance, anti-American sentiment, and an alien in hiding. What more could one ask for?

-Goodbye, forest friends. Hello, syndication.

Dudley’s been hiking around the forest for almost five years, so it’s time for the big-footed dragon to collect his pension (if large reptiles do, indeed, contribute to the cpp).

Season five of Breakthrough Films & Television’s preschool phenom The Adventures of Dudley The Dragon, shooting in June and July, will be the final season, as it brings the number of episodes up to that magic number of 65.

‘Really, this is Dudley’s second decade on tv,’ says Breakthrough chairman/exec producer Ira Levy. ‘We did the original pilot in 1985.’

The season will end with a special trilogy, and the list of this summer’s guest stars include This Hour Has 22 Minutes’ Greg Thomey as Jacob Spookum the Cowardly Ghost and The Newsroom’s Peter Keleghan as The Knight.

Life after Dudley for Breakthrough won’t mean a departure from children’s programming. The company’s about to sign a Canadian broadcaster on Mr. Men (40 episodes of live-action/animation kids’ fare) and is developing Teen Arthur, a series for ‘tweens, with Salter Street of Halifax.

-Coming to a house near you

‘So if the blood stains in the kitchen don’t come off, they repaint it. They’re very accommodating.Š’

Say you own an upscale mansion, of which you are very fond. Would you be amenable to having pas and gaffers traipsing up your stairs, moving your beloved furniture out onto the lawn, re-wallpapering at will, perhaps splattering liters of blood (albeit fake) in your kitchen? You might, if the price was right.

According to Shelley Bleckman of Film Locations, Toronto locations come cheap compared to l.a. Bleckman’s service, which is free to producers, provides a growing collection of locations in and around Toronto. Clients (i. e. people willing to let a cast and crew take over their home or barn or golf course, whatever) ask her to help them snag a location shoot, and she takes a 15% commission.

‘That’s a good deal,’ says Bleckman. ‘In l.a. the locations cost anywhere from us$9,000 to us$15,000 a day, and the commission is 30%.’ According to Bleckman, locations in Toronto often go for the low, low price of $5,000 a day.

Right now, Atlantis is shooting its mow Borrowed Hearts in a Bleckman mansion near Yonge and St. Clair, a home once occupied by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. In order to keep her clients happy, and to avoid some of the oft-quoted location horror stories, Bleckman ‘keeps an eye’ on the location manager and all necessary changes to the venue are put to paper before a contract is signed.

Now that location managers are approaching her instead of the other way around, Bleckman says next up is a digital database of all her location info as well as having all the pics online.

-Almadon finds New Brunswick funny

Gee, people from the East Coast are darned entertaining, if I do say so myself.

Ottawa’s Almadon Productions is coproducing a comedy series with New Brunswick prodco Altus Atlantique, a vehicle for New Brunswicker Marshall Button. Button has traveled Canada for years with his blue-collar stage play The World According to Lucien. The series, an adaptation of the theatrical production, features Lucien and is set in a New Brunswick paper mill. cbc is chipping in some development cash.

Meanwhile, Almadon begins shooting in Moscow this month for Lifespace, a 26-part doc series about the logistics of life in space, like food and showers and conflict resolution. The first 13 episodes will be delivered to Discovery in the fall, with a launch (excuse the pun) expected in January. At Banff, Almadon was pitching the series hard to u.s. Discovery and the Sci-Fi Channel.

The producers are also hoping to close a deal at Banff on Murder at Medicine Hat, a Canada/Germany copro about the 1947 trial and execution of five German prisoners of war in Alberta.

-Update

Remember Head, the first feature from Alive Film Company, the one with Grandpa Munster (87-year-old Al Lewis) as a sex maniac who just happens to be Phatman, a sinister underworld boss? Head will be screening at Universal Studios in La La and the Tribeca Film Center in ny ny at the end of the summer.