High Road Productions is heading to the Calgary Stampede in July to shoot four-time wwf champ Bret ‘Hit Man’ Hart’s comeback attempt and film the bad guy’s romp through the streets as a parade marshal.

At the Banff Television Festival, High Road’s vp television David Ostriker greenlit the one-hour $500,000 nfb copro on the wrestler, closing a deal with tvo for Ontario and Craig Broadcasting’s A-Channel for the rest of Canada. a&e is also a promising window.

Ostriker is skedding production despite one missing piece of the financing puzzle – the final okay from Telefilm Canada – and with the money muddles at the fund Ostriker may be counting his chickens before they hatch.

‘We’re taking a bit of a chanceŠwe have some concerns,’ he admits, but this biz is all about gambles and there’s no way he’s going to miss the stir Hart is sure to cause at the Stampede.

Once the world of hulking wwf wrestlers is wrapped, Ostriker is aiming to produce a one-hour special on another bizarre specimen of humanity – Giants. The copro with Vancouver’s Alex Hamilton Brown uses all sorts of archaeological finds, archived photos of super-tall humans and monster-size basketball players to examine whether a race of giants once inhabited earth. No broadcast windows as yet.

With super-human adults covered, High Road is eyeing extra keen youngsters for the family series Amazing Kids, a 26 half-hour property profiling the achievements of young prodigies that piqued strong interest from Readers Digest Video at Banff.

And hot on the heels of stunning Ontario ratings for Never-Endum Referendum on bbs (in Ontario garnering an average of 400,000 viewers over the 90-minute broadcast with a reach of 1.394 million), High Road opened discussions at Banff with Baton as a first window for another special in development – Korea: Riot In The Morning Calm.

The one-hour will follow Canadian journalist Anne Shin’s return to Korea and her relationship to the country. Vision is interested in a second run on the $500,000 project and Ostriker is slating December for production.

-Second City takes on sports

The ongoing antics of sports celebrities are in for a good dose of Second City spoofing.

Partners Len Stuart and Andrew Alexander have teamed up with l.a.’s Brandon Tartikoff (formerly of nbc and Paramount) on the sketch comedy tv series Sports Bar that Alexander is dubbing ‘a cross between Saturday Night Live and Cheers.’

With wic as the Canadian window and syndie clearance in over 80% of the u.s. market, production on 18 half-hours poking fun at the sports world begins mid-July in Toronto.

And no doubt the endless soap-operish scenarios of the sports scene will provide plenty of fuel for the wit of the Chicago and Toronto-based comedians who will be the base of the show’s ensemble cast. Sports figures will also pop by (some of the Chicago Bulls are slated so far) and a number of comic hosts will be featured throughout the first season run. A director has yet to be lined up for the series, toting a $5 million price tag. The producers are looking to shoot at either DOME Productions or a wic facility.

-Cyberchicks unite!

Here’s some trivia for all you gals to throw around at the next male-infested cocktail partyŠ

Betcha didn’t know that Lord Byron’s daughter Countess Ida Lovelace came up with the concept of programming 150 years ago?

A woman designed those nifty Macintosh computer iconsŠ

And even better – it was a cool, Camel smokin’ female far ahead of her time who developed the cobalt language!

We are soon to learn more such tantalizing tidbits from coproducers Joan Jenkinson and Leslie Padorr who just clinched a development deal with Roughcuts’ Jerry McIntosh on their doc Mainframe Mabel, that sets out to prove that while men may have invented most of the computer hardware, it’s early cyberchicks who showed them how to use it!

The duo had just about given up on placing the $120,000 one-hour that uncovers the unsung contributions of women to the computer field. Discovery had recently aired a women/tech story that didn’t go over well; wtn wasn’t interested in coming on board for development; tvo gave a flat no and History Television said the program just wasn’t entertaining enough. But caught up in the festivities of the Banff hoopla, Jenkinson decided to give it one more shot.

Now the nfb is also interested in coming on board, just waiting to see who Jenkinson will line up as a director. She has a recent award-winning Toronto doc filmmaker (female) in mind but hasn’t contacted her yet. Padorr is seeking a writer to help pen the script. Production is aimed for next January.

-Who needs government $$$ anyway?

Toronto screenwriter Denise O’Rourke and hubby/director John Helliker are proving that you can bankroll a completely Canadian indie feature without government fundingŠand you don’t even need a previous feature to your credit to do it.

They just wrapped production in Toronto’s Parkdale district on Reluctant Angels starring Megan Follows (Anne of Green Gables ) at the center of a love triangle involving Jaimz Woolvett, (‘The Scotfield Kid’ in Unforgiven).

The $800,000 film was four years in the making. The duo intended to produce it themselves with the help of ofdc production money, Telefilm and a distribution deal with Blackwatch Releasing. But plans began to fall through when the ofdc fund dried up. Then came the bad news from TelefilmŠ. They got a great big no last January.

‘We were in the most incredible depths of despair,’ says Helliker, a former Canadian Film Centre resident. ‘We thought the project was dead, that without government funding you just can’t make a film.’

But Blackwatch Releasing exec producer William Mariani stepped in, brought producer Michael Doherty (who just opened Arrakis Films) on board, and picked up half the budget from tmn, the Quebec movie network Super Ecran, Montreal’s cfcf and made tv and video presales at the American Film Market to Europe, Australia and Latin America, as well as a theatrical deal for Korea. Apparently there was a real buzz at the market for strong character films.

Helliker is furiously trying to get a cut ready for the Toronto International Film Festival.

-Friday the 13th jinx

The scenario is uncanny – Universal Pictures’ Blues Brothers 2000 special effects team are at work on Friday the 13th, discover an abandoned car submerged in the water, and end up involved in a freak accident that sends two members to the hospital.

The crew were in Niagara Falls wrapping tests for an upcoming water shoot when a local salvage company decided to remove the vehicle. The boom snapped off the crane, crushing the foot of one crew member and bruising the kidneys of another.

In the meantime the rumor mill has run rampant with all sorts of stories – some claiming the accident took place during a stunt scene, that it was in the midst of a cast shoot – all of which production manager/associate producer Grace Gilroy says are untrue. The feature, starring Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman, shoots in Toronto until the end of August.

-Upcoming

Maya Angelou, African-American actress/author/civil rights activist and p’et laureate of the u.s. among her many titles, will be making her feature filmmaking directorial debut in Toronto July 7 with Down In The Delta – a cable feature for Showtime produced through Dufferin Gate. The shoot continues into August in and around Toronto with Wesley Snipes and Alfre Woodard leading the cast.

Toronto’s Pebblehut Productions has the cbs mini-series The Third Twin in production July 7 til the end of August. Tom McLaughlin is directing and so far Top Gun’s Kelly McGillis has been signed on for the cast. The production company also has a Universal Pictures feature Half-Baked slated for a Toronto location shoot July 14 to August 22. Tamra Davis is settled in the director’s chair and Bob Simonds is producing with Ira Shuman. Dave Chapelle stars.